SwEDENBORG'S 

Doctrine of Correspondence 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

ffpqt. isjitfrigltt !f jj,M.I 

Shelf 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



4 



SWEDENBORG'S 



DOCTRINE of CORRESPONDENCE 



A KEY TO THE INTERCOURSE BETWEEN 
THE SOUL AND BODY 




Chicago 
Western New-Church Union 
1SS9 



THE LIBRAJLT 

OF CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON 



\ 



COPYEIGHT, I889 

L. P. MERCER 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

The Science of Correspondence 5 

' Who was Swedenborg ? 8 

The Second Coming of the Lord 16 

The History of Opinion 23 

Seership 28 

The General Doctrine..,. 33 

Discrete Degrees 34 

The Two Worlds 38 

The Two Bodies 48 

Mental Phenomena 58 

Sources of Influx 66 

Correspondence and Influx . 72 

The Written Word 104 

The Incarnate Word 10S 

The Laws of Providence 112 

"Thoughts About Christian Science" Ex- 
amined , 116 



THE SCIENCE OF COEEESPONDENCE. 



This essay is in fulfilment of the author's 
promise to set forth the doctrine of Swed- 
enborg in some of its bearings on " Christian 
Science" and Metaphysical healing. It is 
hoped also that it may incite to further and 
fuller study of a subject that is exhaustless, 
and which in the otherwise abundant litera- 
ture of the New Church has not so far received 
proportionate treatment. Above all, the writ- 
er indulges a hope that it may prove to 
those who are interested in these high themes, 
and who have had their eyes turned expect- 
antly to the writings of Swedenborg, some- 
thing of a guide and guard against error. 

We are living in the days of the Second 
Coming of the Lord, in which a new thing 
has happened in the world. A rational revel- 
ation concerning God and man and the spirit- 
ual world has been given by means of a man 
prepared to receive it and publish it ; and the 
Divine truths involved aforetime in the "Word 
of God are now evolved by means of the prin- 
ciples and doctrines- so revealed. It is a prin- 

5 



6 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

ciple as universal as the antagonism of good 
and evil, that when the Lord comes to do 
good, the evil are busy to do mischief, and 
when He reveals new truths, Satanic spirits 
are active to instill falsities. " Hell hath en- 
larged herself to meet thee at thy coming," is 
the inevitable effect of the inauguration of a 
• new Divine Dispensation. We are living in 
such a time when good and evil are contend- 
ing on new terms for the mastery of human 
minds. The Lord has revealed rational 
truths in great fulness for the establishment 
of a New Church and a new religion among 
men. The antecedent effect of the revelation 
in the spiritual world, is felt in a new free- 
dom of willing and thinking, and an impulse 
to work out the old problems on new lines. 
Meanwhile the new truths are abroad in the 
world. They press upon all minds, reinforced 
by a new influx from -heaven favorable to 
freedom and reason. They appeal to reason. 
They open causes in the spiritual world and 
in human minds, and impel men to inquire, to 
know, and to understand. But they are divine 
from the Lord, and they have but one end, that 
is to lead men to the Lord and to a higher spir- 
itual life. In the nature of things, this new 
freedom of willing and thinking lets loose 



THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 7 



tie opposing evil and the false. The new 
truths are met by falsities which are agree- 
able to man's selfish and sensual life, which 
masquerade as truths, and blind reason by 
sophistries, and seek to defeat the Lord's 
ends, by feeding man's vanity and self-suffi- 
ciency in the name of spiritual Christianity. 
It is thus that we find the most transcendent 
truths in company with mere insanities and 
falsities, and minds apparently impelled by 
the best of motives involved in most destruc- 
tive errors. This is unavoidable in such a 
time of transition and judgment. The only 
remedy is instruction in genuine truths. The 
fountain of the needed truths is the revela- 
tion which the Lord has made for His New 
Church in the writings of Emanuel Sweden 
bor^. 

It has come to pass as Dr. Wilkinson pre- 
dicted forty years ago, " that while an un- 
believing century could see nothing in Swed- 
enborg, its sucessor more truthful and trust- 
ful sees more and more ; and strong indications 
exist," he said, "that in another five-and-twen- 
ty years the field occupied by this author 
must be visited by the leaders of opinion 
en masse, and whether they will or no; be- 
cause it is not proselytism that will take 



8 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



them there, but the expansion and culmina- 
tion of the truth and the organic course of 
events." Accordingly we find his name to-day 
in all the literature of "new things" and his 
writings are often quoted; but his teachings 
get sadly perverted in the process ; and his 
name is used as authority for opinions that 
otherwise want a character. Nothing but the 
study of his works, on the line of his unvary- 
ing claim for them, that they contain " doc- 
trines received from the Lord alone while 
reading the "Word " can have any weight in 
deciding upon their contents. 

"WHO WAS SWEDENBORG ? 

Swedenborg was the son of a Lutheran 
Bishop, a scholar, a practical engineer, en- 
trusted with high official position, a man of 
science, a philosopher, a theologian and a 
seer who lived between 1688 and 1772. 
This life of fourscore years' untiring energy 
divides itself, upon superficial observation, 
into two periods. The first fifty years of it 
were devoted to the pursuit of natural learn- 
ing and independent investigations in science 
and philosophy. In early life his mind was 
carefully and severely cultivated, and he de- 
veloped a vigorous and acute intellect, with 
a capacity for the most profound and sustain- 



WHO WAS SWEDENBORG? 



9 



ed thought. He was, during this entire per- 
iod, the precise type of man which this gen- 
eration delights to honor; strong, keen, self- 
reliant, practical. Endowed with a hardy 
constitution, he had a calm, placid disposition, 
led an active, laborious, cheerful life, travel- 
ing continually and keeping himself posted 
in the developments of scientific research and 
practical improvement; composed his works 
and conducted his literary business unaided; 
enjoyed the friendship and confidence of his 
king and fellow-statesmen ; held a govern- 
ment position at the head of the College of 
mines, and developed the mineral wealth of 
Sweden; discussed politics in the Senate; mem- 
orialized the government on finance and 
other weighty matters; while he was elabor- 
ating in private and publishing from time to 
time the results of the most sublime and ex- 
tensive philosophical attempts upon which 
any single man ever ventured. Here, I say, 
was the type of man which our age believes 
in. Learned, standing far ahead of his gen- 
eration; exact, trained in mathematical ac- 
curacy and schooled to observation; practical, 
seeing at once some useful application of 
every new discovery; a man of affairs, able 
to take care of his own, and bear his part in 



10 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



the nation's councils ; aspiring, ignoring no 
useful application, but content with no 
achievement short of a final philosophy of 
causes; inductive, taking nothing for granted 
but facts of experiment, and seeking to as- 
cend therefrom to a generalization which shall 
explain them, — this is the sort of man which 
in our day we consider sound and useful and 
grand. Such was Swedenborg, the assessor. 
A more penetrating, untiring, laborious, and 
practical man of science never lived. 

He possessed a quality of analysis so search- 
ing and discriminative as to be altogether 
microscopic in its character and application, 
united with a most wonderful power 
of generalization. By these faculties of 
his mind he was enabled to combine the 
strength of both the old and new philosophy, 
and by a clear analytic and synthetic com- 
parison of every whole with its parts, and of 
the parts with the whole, he did what had 
never been done before, and opened science 
to the light of reason, and to its true position 
as a servant of rational philosophy. His meth- 
od not only enabled him to anticipate con- 
clusions which experimental science has been 
tardy enough in reaching, but it brought him 
face to face with the problems which in our 



WHO WAS SWEDENBORG? 11 



day have opened to the thought of all, and 
to many with such appalling suggestion — 
the search for the soul and the demonstration 
of the infinite. 

The Kev. Frank Sewall, A. M., in the In- 
troduction to his translation of Swedenborg's, 
De Anima says : 

" The one desire and aim animating the entire series of 
Swedenborg's scientific and philosophical writings, was his 
'search for the soul.' This single aim furnishes us the key to 
Swedenborg's mission in the world of science, of philosophy 
of theology. To know the nature of spirit and its relation to 
matter, or, as the author frequently puts it, 'a knowledge of 
the soul and of its intercourse with the body,' was the two-fold 
object of his search * * * Where did he seek this knowledge 
of the soul ? In its own realm. In the living (and not in the 
dead) human body; in the kingdom of uses as exhibited in the 
beautiful order, harmony and activities of the human anatomy, 
and physiology. The 'Animal Kingdom' meant to Swedenborg 
the kingdom of the anima, the realm over which the soul pre- 
sides as queen. The relation of the soul to her body, or her 
own kingdom and world, was what he first sought to know ; 
and through that to know the nature of the soul herself. The 
knowledge he obtained in these labors, while not all that he 
aimed at, was nevertheless that which peculiarly and preemi- 
nently qualified his mind to be recipient of the greater knowl- 
edge of the true nature of spirit and of the relation of the 
spiritual to the natural world." 

Swedenborg's method was first to state and 
study the facts; thus to " elicit from them a 
vintage of first principle; and then to keep 
and refine this wine of truths within the 
vessels of the facts, amplifying it whenever 
possible to the unfilled capacity of the lat- 



1& THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



ter." In pursuing this method he arrived at 
certain generalizations, or as he called them 
" new doctrines," by which he hoped to pass 
from the material organism of the body, to a 
knowledge of the soul which is immaterial. 
Chief among these was the doctrine of Cor- 
respondence, resting upon the equally philo- 
sophic and scientific doctrines of Series, Or- 
ders, Degrees and Modifications. This doc- 
trine of Correspondence as held by him and 
used in these investigations is thus stated by 
Mr. Sewall : 

"Correspondence as seen in the plane of nature only (and it 
was only on this plane that Swedenborg up to this time had 
discovered it,) consists in such a mutual adaptation of inner and 
outer, higher and lower, grosser and more subtle spheres or 
bodies, that there may be a reception, communication and 
transference of motions and affections from one to the other. 
It is therefore the name we give to that kind of intercourse 
which is not bodily influx, or to the union that exists, not by 
continuity or confusion of substance, but by contiguity and 
modification of state. It is the relation of the affluent waves 
of ether to the eye ; of the eye to the sensory fiber ;of the fiber to 
the cortical gland ; of the gland to the common sensory; of the 
sensory to the imagination ; of the imagination to the intellect; 
of the intellect to the soul ; of the soul to God. By correspond 
ence the outer affects the inner without becoming one with it; 
by correspondence things totally different in degree and in 
substance are nevertheless so adapted that motions or tremulous 
vibrations in one may be continued through the other, or 
converted into some modification of the other's state. So the 
soul corresponds in general and in every particular to its body . " 

Swedenborg hoped by the aid of this doc- 
trine, bending his course inward continual- 



WHO WAS SWEDENBORG? 13 



ly, " to open all the doors that lead to her, and 
at length by the divine permission, contem- 
plate the soul herself." He did not succeed. 
He came instead to the inner parts of the living 
body, but not to the soul. The doctrine of 
Correspondence as he held it at this time, 
could not reveal it. It needed the opening 
of spiritual sight to see the soul in its own 
spiritual body in its own spiritual world; then 
Correspondence with two experimental terms 
two visible things, might show their relation 
and intercourse. 

It was at this time while still eu gaged up- 
on the "Animal Kingdom/' at the ripe age 
of fifty-six, in the full maturity of his powers, 
that Swedenborg was called, as he declares, 
" to a holy office by the Lord, who most gra- 
ciously manifested Himself to me in person 
and opened my sight to the view of the spir- 
itual world, and granted me the privilege of 
conversing with spirits and angels." " From 
that day forth," he says, " I gave up all world- 
ly learning, and labored only in spiritual 
things, according to what the Lord command- 
ed me to write." 

The work of the remaining years of this 
remarkable life is accessible in English in 
some thirty volumes of his theological writ- 



14 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



ings. They present a system of psychology 
as unique as it is logically consistent, resting 
on an analysis of the spiritual world and of 
man as a spiritual being, froni " things heard 
and seen in the other world; " they unfold 
the spiritual sense of the Sacred Scriptures in 
accordance with the science of Correspond- 
ence as now perceived in its fullness in the 
observation of the laws and phenomena of 
both worlds at once under the divine guid- 
ance ; and they present an orderly, rational 
and spiritual theology, derived from the spir- 
itual sense of the Scriptures and confirmed in 
their very letter ; the whole claiming to be 
under the call, guidance and inspiration of 
the Lord Jesus Christ, for the founding of a 
New Church and the restoration and perfect- 
ing of the true Christian Religion. 

It is this astounding claim which the ec- 
clesiastical and modern critical spirit, each 
in its own way and on its own grounds, re- 
jects and ridicules ; and yet the doctrines in 
these writings are continually asserting them- 
selves and attracting, ever and ever, more at- 
tention. There is call for rational examina- 
tion ; every mind may challenge the claim, for 
it is made with appeal to the understanding; 
but there will be no compromise, for Sweden* 



WHO WAS SWEDENBORG ? 



15 



borg allows none. The revelations and doc- 
trines are the Lord's, not his. Circumspect 
we may be, but no one can investigate the 
teachings to any purpose, without consider- 
ing the mission of the teacher. Swedenborg's 
call, his intromission into the spiritual world, 
the opening of his understanding to the law 
of Correspondence which rules in that world 
and explains the origin and order of this 
world, the revelation of the spiritual sense 
of the Word, and the formulation of its di- 
vine doctrine, — all these things are so bound 
up and held together, that they must be ex- 
amined and considered together. Why such 
a call and mission ? 

1. He tells us that the Church was dead 
in a spiritless formalism, and an equally life- 
less speculative discussion of dogma, and that 
the Lord would revive it according to His 
promise, and restore to the world the spirit- 
ual doctrines of faith. 

2. That no rational belief in a spiritual 
and eternal world remained, and that to re- 
store it to men, there was needed the human 
experience of life in the spiritual world from 
which to deduce in rational light the true 
knowledge of that world. 

3. That belief in the Word of God, being 



16 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



practically dead, would, under the question- 
ing of natural learning, become more and 
more rejected in the churches. That to pro- 
vide against this, it was necessary that the 
law of divine creation and revelation, which 
is Correspondence, should be learned by ob- 
servation and experience in the spiritual 
world, and rationally applied to the opening 
of the spiritual sense of the Holy Scriptures. 

4. That the doctrines of the Christian re- 
ligion, being falsified, needed to be re -taught, 
and in new forms apprehensible to spiritual 
reason, and that for this was needed a teacher 
trained in spiritual experience, introduced 
into the sphere of heavenly wisdom, and sub- 
missive to the illuminating guidance of the 
Lord. 

5. That, thus, the old order of the Church 
having come to its crisis, and being about to 
pass away in unbelief, the Lord should ac- 
complish his Second Coming in the revela- 
tion of the spiritual sense of the divine 
Word, and its heavenly doctrines to men. 

THE SECOND COMING OF THE LORD. 

The Lord always comes with new revela- 
tion when the Church He had previously 
established among men has become perverted 
by them, and is no longer a means of leading 



THE SECOND COMING. 



17 



men to the Lord and establishing His king- 
dom among them. At different periods in 
the history of His kingdom on earth, He 
has made use of men as his instruments. 
Thus, when the time came for the institution 
of the Jewish Church, He raised up Moses, 
who had from his very childhood in Egypt 
been educated and prepared for the mission, 
to accomplish the work. In like manner, 
when the Jewish Church had run its course, 
and the Lord came into the world and took 
our nature upon Him, He called His twelve 
disciples around Him, and educated and in- 
structed them, that through their instrumen- 
tality the Christian Church might be estab- 
lished. And now in these latter days, after 
the first Christian Church has finished its 
course, and fulfilled the prophecy of its end, 
the Lord in accordance with His promise has 
accomplished his Second Coming by unveil- 
ing the spiritual sense in His Word which is 
from Him and is Himself. 

The Second Coming of the Lord is not in 
person as at His first advent ; for then He 
assumed a human nature and glorified it for 
reasons of redemption and salvation, that 
He might become in His Humanity the vis- 
ible God, and acquire to His Humanity " all 



18 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

power in heaven and on earth." What He 
came to do in His Incarnation He perfectly 
accomplished, and needed not to do again ; 
nay, because it was a Divine work it is, and 
can not be repeated. What was needed for 
the sake of separating the evil from the good, 
that those who have believed and who do 
believe in Him may be saved, and that there 
may be formed of them a New Heaven and 
a New Church on earth, is such a revelation 
of divine goodness and truth in the Word 
as will bring the Lord spiritually present in 
power and glory. 

The Lord, who is the Word, did not, there- 
fore, come to men a second time in person on 
earth, but by revealing the genuine meaning 
of His written Word in which divine truth 
is in its light ; and in this He is continually 
present. This is His Second Coming " in 
the clouds of heaven with power and great 
glory ; " for the literal sense of the Word is 
as a cloud, and the Spiritual sense as the 
glory, by which the Lord as the Son of Man 
is revealed in all things of the Word.* 
Swedenborg says : 

Since the Lord can not manifest Himself in person, and 
yet He has foretold that He would come and establish a New 



♦Manual of New Church Doctrine, p. 



THE SECOND COMING. 



19 



Church, which is the New Jerusalem, it follows that He will 
do it by means of a man, who is able not only to receive the 
doctrines of this Church with his understanding, but also to 
publish them by the press. That the Lord has manifested 
Himself before me, His servant, and sent me on this office, 
and that after thi s He opened the sight of my spirit, and thus 
let me into the spiritual world, and gave me power to see the 
heavens and the hells, and also to speak with angels and 
spirits, and this is now continually for many years, I testify 
in truth ; and also that from the first day of that call, I have 
not received anything which pertains to the doctrines of that 
Church from any angel, but the Lord alone while I read the 
Word.* 

It seems important to- set forth this matter 
clearly ; for on Swedenborg's testimony his 
theological writings are not in any sense, as 
they are so often regarded, a continuation of 
his philosophical speculation. There is an 
interposition of the Lord, and a new depart- 
ure. There is the Divine purpose to open 
the spiritual sense of the Word. It must be 
accomplished by means of a man ; and the 
man, however naturally endowed and trained, 
must needs be further prepared by intro- 
mission into the spiritual world. Thus he 
says, the spiritual sense of the Word could 
not " be comprehended, without knowing 
how things are in another life, for most 
things which are in the internal sense of the 
Word have respect to these things, recount 
them and involve them."f So of the doc- 

* True Christian Religion, n. 779. t Arcana Coelestia, n. 67. 



20 THE SCIENCE OP CORRESPONDENCE. 



trine which he calls heavenly, " because it is 
from the spiritual sense of the Word, and 
this is the same as the doctrine which is in 
heaven." * It could never have been under- 
stood and set forth except after experience 
in the spiritual world. And finally, as to 
the importance of a knowledge of the 
spiritual world itself to the man of the 
Church : 

" The man of the church at this day knows scarcely any- 
thing about heaven and hell, and his life after death, although 
they stand forth described in the Word. Yea, also, many who 
were born within the church deny these things, saying, in 
their heart, Who has come thence and told us ? Lest, there- 
fore, this denial, which reigns especially with those who have 
much of the wisdom of the world, should also infect and cor- 
rupt the simple in heart and faith, Jt has been given me to be 
together with the angels, and to speak with them as man with 
man, and also to see the things which are in the heavens, and 
the things which are in the hells; and thus now to describe 
them from things seen and heard, hoping that ignorance may 
be enlightened and incredulity dissipated. Such immediate 
revelation is made at this day because this is meant by the 
coming of the Lord." f 

At the threshold of his inquiry into Swed- 
enborg's doctrine of Correspondence, and 
consideration of its bearings on psychological 
problems, the reader is therefore warned of 
its dependence upon the fact of his seer- 
ship, and knowledge attained by his intro- 
mission into the other world. Looking back 

* New Jerusalem and its Doctrines, n. 7. 
t Heaven and Hell, n. i. 



THE SECOND COMING. 



21 



to his scientific career, he tells us that he saw 
its purpose, that "he had been introduced 
by the Lord first into the natural sciences, 
and prepared from 1710 to 1744, when 
heaven was opened to him ; the reason why 
he, a philosopher, had been chosen to this 
office, being, that spiritual knowledge, which 
is revealed at this day, might be reasonably 
learned and naturally understood ; because 
spiritual truths answer to natural truths, 
which originate, flow from, and answer as a 
foundation for them.'" When he had run 
the circuit of the sciences, he was introduced 
to a new world of facts and laws, by the 
opening of his spiritual senses ; and thus to 
a spiritual science and philosophy which 
could never have been discovered without 
these facts, and can never be understood 
apart from them. 

The importance of this experience is finely 
shown by Dr. Wilkinson in his biography of 
Swedenborg, when speaking of the inter- 
course between the soul and the body, and 
the inability of philosophy to give the soul 
qualities that warrant us to say what it is, 
he remarks that " here we see the value of 
sight on a difficult point. While the soul 
was unknown, its manner of communication 



22 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



with the body was necessarily occult, but 
when it was actually seen as the man him- 
self, with all his looks, members and gar- 
ments about him, the matter took a practical 
form." "We may illustrate this by man 
and his ostensible connections with this 
world. Now we see man, and the manner in 
which he lays hold upon his objects, which 
is clearly typified by his actual handling of 
certain things. But suppose for a moment 
that we were some other being, and that man 
was invisible to us, and that still the objects 
were moved from place to place with an ap- 
parent design. In this case we should have 
a type of what the motions and actions of 
the body are to an abstract philosopher. It 
would be a kind of ghostly and fearful gal- 
vanism, and the existence of something to be 
called man, though what could never be 
known, would be the last induction of phil- 
osophy from the strange events which were 
taking place around. Place the seer, how- 
ever, the person who can see this powerful 
and actual man who is creating them, and 
sight itself without a strained faculty, will 
account for the whole connection of events. 
We see them produced and we see the agent. 
Such is the native and substantial function 



THE HISTORY OF OPINION. 



23 



of eyes, whether those of the spirit or the 
body, executed in their proper sphere. The 
man who can see the soul has done with 
abstract philosophy. The spiritual world is 
united to the natural by answerable links to 
the above. So long as the spiritual is kept 
by the philosophers, and consists of intuition 
and mathematical points we may well won- 
der if it be united with nature; for what love 
can consist between the starry firmaments on 
one hand and blank being on the other? 
There is freezing indifference on either side, 
and of course no union. The addition of an 
abstract idea to the world, is the world unal- 
tered, though a little blurred ; the sinking of 
the world in the idea, is on the other hand 
idealism or destruction of thought. There is 
every reason for ' civil war between the soul 
and the body,' and discord between the two 
worlds, under circumstances in which one 
party to the agreement is essentially unknown, 
But thanks be to God, spiritual sight has 
again saved us here.*"* 

THE HISTORY OF OPINION. 

"What we need to be instructed in is, not 
merely that the soul is immortal, but what 

♦Emanuel Swedenborg. A biographical sketch by James John 
Garth Wilkinson, pp. 199, 200. 



24 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



the soul is ; and this not alone as regards a 
future life, but our present existence. Hith- 
erto, perhaps no term in the language has 
been so indeterminate as this word soul. In 
the old faiths it is a name with no answering 
reality; and now in this day, of positive 
ideas and strict definitions, we need to define 
the soul, to exhibit it to thought, or cease to 
use a name for which we have nothing as a 
relative. 

The history of opinion is not a develop- 
ment in this case, but a round of affirma- 
tions carrying us back to the point in which 
it started on its speculative career. If we 
attempt to reduce the ancient opinions to a 
general summary we shall find that between 
the remotest period of history and the dawn 
of Christianity, speculative philosophy had 
covered substantially the same ground as that 
to-day occupied by the metaphysicians and 
materialists. 

1. There were those who believed the 
soul to be elemental in its nature and there- 
fore attributed body to it ; among these, such 
as believed in a divine, universally pervading 
element, allowed the soul immortality, which 
was denied by those who believed in no 



THE HISTORY OF OPINION 



25 



other elements but such as are tangible to 
our senses. 

2. Another class believed the soul to 
consist in the harmony of bodily organiza- 
tion, and consequently to be inseparable from 
it ; an opinion which re-appears in our day in 
very respectable company, and necessarily 
concludes against immortality. 

3. By others the entire intellectual, 
rational, sensual, and vital force of the whole 
body was held to be separable and immortal ; 
but it was believed to carry away from the 
body a pneumatic or ethereal limbus, from 
which it could only be disengaged by some 
process of purification, and when thus liber- 
ated ceased to have body. 

This, of course is not an exhaustive classi- 
fication of ancient opinion; but it is prac- 
tically inclusive, and serves to show, that the 
ancient mind, apart from that kind of experi- 
ence which philosophers pride themselves in 
neglecting — the experience of open seership 
— was unable to conceive of the soul as 
enjoying any other sensational organization 
than that of the material body. In so far as 
they were compelled to admit the reality of 
some of its sensations, they accounted for the 
supposed anomaly on the principle of imper- 



26 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



feet development, or abnormal attachment to 
nature. They could form no conception of 
an outbirth of ideal forms in any other than 
a material pabulum, the soul being consid- 
ered incapable of substantial organization. 

The problem descending to later times was 
taken up by Christianity, The doctrine of 
the Resurrection, the Transfiguration of 
Christ, the vision of Moses and Elias, and of 
the angels at Bethlehem and at the sepulchre, 
the post-resurrection appearances of the Lord, 
imparted to the early disciples the conception 
of a spiritual body. Subsequently the Chris- 
tian Fathers, Origin, Tertullian and others, 
made the application to the visions of the 
Seers, maintaining that the soul is the man 
himself in a perfectly organized spiritual 
body. But unfortunately, perhaps unavoid- 
ably, these simple and elevating truths of 
the early faith were soon obscured, and the 
Fathers treated with neglect. The philoso- 
phers overlaid the experimental evidence of 
the gospel with the traditional speculations 
which it was intended to supersede. In the 
darkness which fell upon the Church, the 
opinions of the pagan world not only divided 
the schools among themselves, but were dis- 
cussed with scarcely more regard to the 



THE HISTORY OF OPINION. 



27 



gospel and its revelations than could have 
prevailed before it was proclaimed. Working 
apart from the data of revelation, and ignoring 
the phenomena uncovered to the Bible seers, 
the devious reasonings of the Christian schools 
worked round, as I said, to the starting point 
of the old philosophers. If the thought 
changed its form it was only to be shorn of 
its one-time grandeur and poetic freshness. 
It came at last in the current doctrines of the 
soul to a logical demonstration of nothing. 

There is no conception in modern specula- 
tive thought of spiritual form and organiza- 
tion apart from the material body. The 
mode of induction is to abstract all the 
qualities of the body aod take what is left as 
our knowledge of the soul; as Dr. Sears said, 
"You must first go through the process of 
subtraction, and then look after your remain- 
der.'" Body has form, organization; take 
these away and you have pure spirit without 
form. Denuded to this extent it would be 
interesting to know what is left of us ; and we 
have for answer, 'thinking principle/ 'pure 
essence,' 'a metaphysical entity,' 'a substance 
uncompounded and without parts.'* Eun 
this to its last dismal absurdity, and you will 

*Foregleams of Immortality, p. 27 et seq. 



28 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

see that these are only names for nothing. 
That which is no substance is nothing. Sub- 
stance without form is not given. You may 
talk of virtue, goodness, intellect, and so 
forth ; but they must attach themselves to a 
living subject, else they fade into nothing- 
ness, with a name it may be, but without 
existence. In the presence of such profitless 
verbiage, it is not surprising that many 
strong minds, with keen powers of observa- 
tion and great respect for things that are 
open to sense, should define life as "the 
aggregate of the activities of the physical 
organism," and thought as a property of the 
brain. 

SEEKSHIP. 

The Bible presents a world of facts to be 
investigated, not a set of formulas to be be- 
lieved. It unveils principles in human 
actions, causes and laws in Providence and 
government ; not doctrinal propositions ready 
made. And thus it is that in the Bible 
there are very few doctrinal projDOsitions 
concerning the soul. Its reality is assumed 
throughout, its spirituality is assumed, its 
human personality is assumed, and its immor- 
tality is continually assumed where it is not 
directly affirmed. Beyond this there are 



SEERSHIP. 



29 



only disclosures; but what magnificent dis- 
closures for the founding of a science of the 
spiritual! There are no philosophical propo- 
sitions in the Bible regarding the nature of 
the soul and the world of souls: but a cloud 
of witnesses testify that their "eyes being 
opened" they have seen, and offered their 
experiences for reason to generalize from. 
Grouping all these visions we may say: 

1. The Scriptures represent that men 
have been permitted to see, and in many 
ways to be sensible of spirits and angels out 
of the physicial body, though once men on 
earth, and now moving among phenomenal 
realities not of earth. That is, 

2. These persons and things were per- 
ceived in a plane within nature and discrete 
from it, by spiritual senses touched and 
opened for the purpose, and in no case by 
physical sense alone. 

These things are testified by patriarchs 
prophets and seers, from Abraham to John 
the revelator ; and their testimony is to be 
accounted for. Things which outgo daily 
experience have been attested over all the 
world by the personal character of the 
narrators ; especially when one after another 
deposits his stone of experience and the 



30 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

unpremeditated building rises under an un- 
seen hand into heavenly proportions, and 
becomes the only fitting abode of conscience, 
affection and religion. The witnesses agree. 
Swedenborg coming after them, not only re- 
peats their testimony " I saw heaven opened" 
but claims a mental preparation in a half- 
century of scientific training, and a state of 
prolonged seership, enabling him to become 
familiar with the spiritual world as an ex- 
plorer and an investigator, and thus to explain 
the visions of the prophets and to present 
a completed temple of spiritual science, into 
which their separate testimony fits with the 
perfect relation of truth. He tells us that 
the disclosures of the Bible mean this: 

1. That what we call the soul is the 
man himself with an organized spiritual 
body, clothed upon with the physical body 
which is its perfect correlative and corres- 
pondent, and its adaptation to the plane of 
nature for primary development and edu- 
cation, but passing, when uncased by death, 
into sensible cognisance of the spiritual 
world; that is 

2. Into a world of spiritual substances 
and forms, phenomenal to spiritual sensa- 
tion, and related to the outer universe as 



SEERSHIP. 



31 



the soul to the body, its correlative and 
correspondent. 

If this be true, seership is intelligible 
and spiritual science is possible. But if it 
is not true, if the soul has no organization 
and no form, and the spiritual world no 
things, then the seers were not seers, and 
he who saw heaven opened saw nothing ; 
then our beloved dead are not, and we our- 
selves are elected to be nothing ; then the 
asjnration of science is a cheat and a snare, 
because the knower is nobody and there is 
nothing to know. 

As we have seen, there are three possible 
theories, than which no others have been 
conceived in the mind and embodied in 
language: 

1. We may try to think with the 
metaphysicians of the soul as disembodied 
spirit, that is, a pure simplicity ; that is a 
metaphysical point, that is, a logical definition 
of nothing, 

2. We may think of the emotional and 
intellectual life, which we call the soul, as 
inseparable from the physical organism; and 
then whether you call it with the material- 
ists, a property of this organism in defiance 
of all logic and in the absence of all proof, or 



32 THE SCIENCE OF COPRESPONDENCE. 

whether you call it, after the old theology, 
and in defiance of common-sense, a vital 
spark, waiting nowhere to get its manhood 
out of the grave in a final resurrection of 
dead bodies, it comes to the same thing; 
when the body dies it disintegrates and 
personal identity and function are forever 
lost. 

3. It is difficult to see why in such an 
alternative we should not come to the only 
theory that remains, the only one that an- 
swers the demands of reason, the obser- 
vations of life, and the alleged facts of 
Revelation, namely : that the soul is an 
organized spiritual body living in and by 
virtue of a world of spiritual substances, 
forces and forms, both interior to the 
physical body and its world of sense. Once 
admit this doctrine into the court of reason 
and there is something to learn ; and the 
Lord, through His properly prepared and 
commissioned servant, can begin to teach us 
on the basis of things "heard and seen." 



THE GENEKAL DOCTKINE. 



Witli tlie opening of Swedenborg's spirit- 
ual senses there was presented to his mind a 
new field of induction. There was spread 
out before him a new world, with facts to be 
studied and laws to be discovered. It was 
immediately evident that there are two 
worlds, distinct from each other; one in 
which all things are spiritual, and the other 
in which all things are natural. It was also 
evident that spirits and angels in their own 
world are in bodies in human form, for he 
saw them and talked with them. It was also 
evident that their world was in all respects a 
world, and not an idea; for he beheld its 
firmament and landscape, its sun and all 
proceeding from it, related to his spiritual 
senses as really, and in all respects similarly, 
as this world to his bodily senses. It was 
also evident that the two worlds are perfectly 
distinct, for he was in both at the same time. 
He beheld the two worlds and perceived that 
they answered to each other, as cause and 
effect. Then it was that his philosophical 
doctrines of Degrees and Correspondences 

33 



34 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



received a new basis of fact, a new field of 
illustration, and a new significance as to the 
order and law of creation. 

DISCRETE DEGREES. 

There are continuous degrees which ex- 
hibit gradation on the same plane ; as greater 
or less degrees of light or heat or pressure. 
So, likewise, there are greater or less degrees 
of clearness in intelligence or understanding; 
and greater or less facility of expression in 
speech. These, however, are only differences 
of more or less in things on the same plane, 
and continuous. But the degree which dis- 
tinguishes the understanding from the speech 
is discrete, and not continuous. The thought 
does not shade off into the expression. The 
thought may be more or less clear on its own 
plane; and the expression more or less 
clear on its plane ; but the planes 
are distinct. The thought descends into 
the speech and clothes itself, and thus 
takes on a new form and function on 
a lower plane of existence, without losing 
its own form and function in the mind 
itself. It is the efficient cause of which 
the speech is the effect. The thought is 
spiritual, the speech is natural. They belong 
to correlated planes of existence, which do 



DISCRETE DEGREES. 



35 



not shade off into each other, bnt are distinct 
and joined by their correspondence whereby 
the internal operates into the external, as the 
cause produces and actuates the effect. Such 
is the relation of a mental cause to its phys- 
ical effect ; such the relation of the spirit in 
its own body to the physical body ; and such 
the relation of the spiritual world to the nat- 
ural world. They are not opposites, they are 
correlati ves : neither are they continuous, but 
separated by a discrete degree ; and they are 
held in vital connection by Correspondence. 

The importance of this knowledge to all 
psychological certainty is inexpressible. It is 
the missing link that connects and relates the 
body and the soul. It is the missing 
" bridge w by which to pass the gulf that sep- 
arates the "correlated facts of consciousness 
and the molecular movements of the brain." 
And it is important to dwell a moment on 
this fact of the separateness of the two worlds, 
which is a revelation, and could never have 
been discovered except to the seer experi- 
mentally in both worlds ; but which being 
known is easily confirmed to reason. 

The spiritual world is spiritual. Its sub- 
stances are spiritual; its forms are spiritual; 
its forces are spiritual. It is a world with 



36 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

sensible phenomena ; but it is not therefore a 
material paradise here or there in the expanse 
of space. It is within the natural world, not 
as one box is within another, or an ether in a 
vessel, but as the man is within his body. 
The mind, which is the man and in the hu- 
man form, is while in this world within the 
physical body ; and they correspond part to 
part to part and function to function. So the 
spiritual world is within the natural world, 
and they correspond thing to thing, relation 
to relation and force to force. This difference 
Swedenborg expresses by the term Discrete 
degree, because the two worlds are entirely 
separate from each other and " must be dis- 
cerned in distinct separation." The relation 
and bond between them he expresses by the 
term Correspondence, because it is the rela- 
tion of cause to effect. Broadly speaking, the 
spiritual world and the soul are one degree ; 
the natural world and the body are another 
degree. And because they are distinct and 
yet correspond, the spiritual can clothe itself 
with the natural, and by influx fill and actu- 
ate it. Correspondence as the law of relation 
and influx, " depends with absoluteness upon 
the separation of the two corresponding 
sides, spirit and nature, upon their discon- 



DISCRETE DEGREES. 



o7 



timdty. If the one ran into the other, they 
could not correspond; and consequently 
could not be united; just as if male and 
female were in one person there could be no 
marriage."* Dr. Wilkinson says with none 
too much emphasis, " It is important just 
now to set these most unmystical doctrines or 
teachings of Correspondence and its necessary 
discontinuity, before us, because attempt is 
made in powerful quarters to show that life 
and nature are continuous and cohere by lines 
of sameness of law. In short, to show that 
natural law reigns also in the spiritual world, 
and thus that there is only one world, which 
in that case presumably may be the natural 
world as cognized by the bodily senses. So 
long as this is held there can be no knowl- 
edge of the spiritual world, or the life after 
death, and the belief in both must be weak- 
ened accordingly. And then man's own met- 
aphysics will be the ruler of belief, and will 
shake hands with all that is worst in mate- 
rialistic scientism, and take from it the laws 
with which it traverses religious faith and 
hoj3e and broadens the public road to agnos- 
ticism, or to the positivist dogma of annihila- 
tion."* Just as surely will the metaphysics 

♦Greater Origins and Issues of Life and Death, pp. 267 and 269. 



38 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

which seeks to maintain its idealism come to 
negation of spiritual life by denying to spirit, 
form or function, unless it admits into its 
thinking these facts of a distinct spiritual 
body and a distinct spiritual world. 

THE TWO WORLDS. 

This entirely distinct but very real spirit- 
ual world exists and subsists from its own 
sun, which is pure love from Jehovah God 
in the midst of it; and the natural world 
exists from its sun which is pure fire, in itself 
dead, but sustained and actuated by influx 
from the spiritual sun. The author says: 

" The reason why there is one sun of the 
spiritual world and another sun of the natural 
world, is because those worlds are altogether 
distinct; and a world derives its origin from 
its sun ; for a world in which all things are 
spiritual cannot originate from a sun all 
things from which are natural, for thus influx 
would be physical, which nevertheless is con- 
trary to order. That the world existed from 
the sun, and not vice versa, is manifest from 
an effect of this cause, viz., that the world in 
all and each of its parts subsists by means of 
the sun, and subsistence demonstrates exist- 
ence, wherefore it is said that subsistence is 
perpetual existence; from whence it is evi- 



THE TWO WORLDS. 



39 



dent, that if the sun were removed, its world 
would fall into chaos, and this chaos into 
nothing. That in the spiritual world there 
is a different sun from that in the natural 
world, I can testify, for I have seen it: it 
appears fiery like our sun, nearly of a similar 
magnitude, and is at a distance from the 
angels as our sun is from men ; but it does not 
rise nor set, but stands immovable in a 
middle altitude between the zenith and the 
horizon, whence the angels have perpetual 
light and perpetual spring. The man of 
reason, who knows nothing concerning the 
sun of the spiritual world, easily becomes 
delirious in his idea concerning the creation 
of the universe, which, when he deeply 
considers it, he perceives no otherwise than 
as being from nature, and as the origin of 
nature is the sun, no otherwise than as 
being from its sun as a creator. Moreover 
no one can apprehend spiritual influx 
unless he also knows the origin of it; for all 
influx proceeds from a sun, spiritual influx 
from its sun, and natural influx from 
its sun. The internal sight of man, which 
is that of his mind, receives influx from the 
spiritual sun, but his external sight, which 
is that of his body, receives influx from the 



40 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



natural sun; and both are conjoined in oper- 
ation, in like manner as the soul is conjoined 
with the body." 

Spiritual things cannot proceed from any- 
other source than from love, and love from 
no other source than from the Lord who is 
love itself ; therefore the spiritual sun from 
which, as from their fountains all spiritual 
things stream forth, is pure love proceeding 
from the Lord who is in the midst of it. 
That sun is not the Lord, but is from Him; 
it is the nearest sphere around him, from 
Himself. By means of this sun the universe 
was created by the Lord. 

The heat from the sun of the spiritual world 
is in its essence love, and the light from that 
sun is in its essence wisdom; and the heat 
and light from the sun of the natural world 
serve them for clothing that they may pass 
to nature and to man. These things are 
matters of experience; and as facts can be 
thought about. As soon as they are con- 
sidered reason perceives abundant confirma- 
tions. "It is well known that in the Word, 
and thence in the common language of 
preachers the Divine love is expressed by 
fire; as when prayer is offered that heavenly 
fire may fill the heart and kindle holy 



THE TWO WORLDS. 



41 



desire. The reason is because fire corres- 
ponds to love, and signifies it. That such 
fire has heat proceeding from it, appears 
plainly from the effects of love. Thus a 
man is set on fire, grows warm and becomes 
inflamed, as his love is exalted into zeal, or 
into the glow of anger. The heat of the 
blood or the vital heat of men and animals 
in general proceeds solely from love which 
constitutes their life. Neither is infernal 
fire anything else than love opposite to 
heavenly love. Thence it is, that the 
Divine love appears to the angels in their 
world as a sun, fiery like our sun ; and that 
the angels enjoy heat according to their 
reception of love from the Lord by means of 
that sun. It follows that the light there is 
in its essence wisdom; for love and wisdom 
are indivisible, since love exists by means of 
wisdom and according to it. I have often 
seen that spiritual light," he says, " and it 
immensely exceeds natural light in bright- 
ness and splendor. As light is wisdom, there- 
fore the Lord calls Himself the light which 
enlighteneth every man. It is believed that 
natural lumen, which also is rational, pro- 
ceeds from the light of our world ; but it pro- 
ceeds from the light of the sun of the spirit- 



43 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



ual world, for the sight of the mind flows into 
the sight of the eye, thus also the light of the 
spiritual world into the light of the natural 
world, but not the reverse." * 

The heat and light from the sun of the 
spiritual world, and all things which exist 
from and by means of them, are substantial, 
and are called spiritual; and the heat and 
light from the sun of this world, and all 
things which exist here by means of them, are 
material, and are called natural. The two 
worlds are quite similar as to external form, 
but as to internal form they are quite dis- 
similar. A spiritual garden, for example, is 
in appearance similar to a natural garden; 
but it is living, from the souls who dwell in 
it, while a natural garden is made with hands. 
The substances of the spiritual world are liv- 
ing like the mind itself. The desire of the 
will flows into the thought of the under- 
standing and fashions it to the form of the 
desire ; then the desire in the thought, which 
is its own form, descending into the imagina- 
tion, presents itself in a mental picture, which 
is an object of intellectual sight. All this 
takes place within the mind whenever we 
think from affection with desire to create and 

* Intercourse of the soul and the body. Nos. 4-6. 



THE TWO WORLDS. 



43 



to possess. In the spiritual world its living 
atmospheres and substances are immediately 
responsive to the mind's activity, and the 
idea, which corresponds in the mind to its 
desire and thought, projects itself into sub- 
stantial forms in the world external to the 
mind. The phenomenal spiritual world, 
therefore, is created through the minds of 
those who dwell in it ; corresponds to the 
states of the minds through which it is cre- 
ated; and changes with their change. But 
in this world, the dead materials of nature 
have to be formed and fashioned into fixed 
copies of living spiritual forms, into which 
life, through the spiritual world may flow ; 
just as the mind which would realize 
here its idea of what it would have, must 
fashion a copy in inert material substances. 
The chair is wanted, and thought of, before it is 
made ; in the spiritual world when wanted and 
thought of it is made, and the owner has it 
while he wants it ; but in this world to have it 
he must fashion so much dead stuff into the 
fixed form of his idea, and then he has it to 
go away from and come back to as he wants 
it. So of the two worlds in general and par- 
ticular ; all things under the spiritual sun 
are living, all under the natural sun are dead ; 



44 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



all things in the spiritual world are momen- 
tarily created, continued and varied by living 
heat and light through the states of human 
souls ; all things in the natural world are cre- 
ated, spaced and fixed in dead material forms 
corresponding to the living forms of the spir- 
itual world and capable of receiving an influx 
of life and actuating force through the spir- 
itual world. The natural world is created 
through the spiritual world. Created through 
it, it corresponds to it. Corresponding to it, 
the spiritual world flows into the natural 
world, and animates and actuates it, as the 
soul flows into the body, — not as becoming 
in any way a part of it, but as a distinct act- 
uating form and force within it in all and 
every part of it. Why is a dead sun and 
world wanted ? 

" The cause of the creation of the dead sun is, that all 
things may be fixed, stated, and constant in the ultimates, and 
that from this ground things may exist, which shall be abid- 
ing and everlasting. The terraqueous globe, in which, upon 
which, and about which, such things exist, is as a basis and 
firmament ; for it is the last work in which all things end, and 
upon which they rest. It is also a womb out of which effects, 
which are the ends of creation, are produced." * 

We see in the light of this teaching from 
facts, the error of those who deny a dead 
material world. Without it there could be 

* Divine love and wisdom. No. 165. 



THE TWO WORLDS. 



45 



no creation. Spiritual things could not be 
permanent. Man could have no personal 
life ; no permanent states, The real reasons 
of this necessity are finely given by Dr. 
Wilkinson in answer to the question, "Why 
is a dead sun wanted?" "For the same rea- 
son that the human body is wanted for the 
inhabitants of nature. Man has to be cre- 
ated; that is to say, separated and dis- 
tanced from the creator in order that he may 
be a personal existence. He cannot begin 
his career in the spiritual world, because then 
lie would be a projection from the Divine 
into nothing) the concept would be as of a 
force without a recipient vessel to hold it." 
This is the root of error, it may be remarked, 
in all past metaphysics, with its " intellectual 
entities" and "metaphysical points," and 
"uncompound substance without body and 
without parts;" and the modern idealism 
that discourses of man as "an idea or thought 
of God," without any personal organism, is 
equally unreal and unthinkable. Life must 
have an organism to operate a function ; and 
the organism must be twofold, spiritual to 
receive life, and at first material to give per- 
manence to spiritual forms, and react against 
the inflowing life. "Dead matter," continues 



46 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

Dr. Wilkinson, "is the only thing that can ar- 
rest the divine life, and be animated by it into 
an appearance of life ; which everlasting ap- 
pearance is man's life. To produce this death - 
matter is the last office of the natural sun. 
That sun must be dead to effect this end. It 
is the same problem as man's arising from 
unconscious enbryohood and infancy into 
personal and mental existence; he springs 
from apparent non- entity in these respects 
into a marked individual. This he can only 
do through experiences, all of which are 
transacted and gained through the natural 
brain and material body. The sun, the foun- 
tain of matter, space and time, has to make 
these conditional things for this use. All 
mental or personal development, to be last- 
ing, must begin at the bottom; even all 
angelhood must rise from the ranks, and be 
a mere private soldier of Christ here, before 
he is a Captain above. And this is why a 
mortal or terrene body is required to indi- 
vidualize by the first and lowest experiences, 
and to make the vessel which hereafter can 
receive and hold the divine projection of 
deathless life. We know that matter or 
dead natural substance exists; we know that 
our embodiment through it is the condition 



THE TWO WORLDS. 



47 



of our being in this world. We know that 
it fixes us to our place and time. For us that 
is its function; we know by abundant exact 
Revelation that when this body dies we are 
taken out of it and live forever in another 
state. What then is the office of the matter? 
To give us permanence here and hereafter. 
Our higher minds are founded upon our nat- 
ural minds, whose fixity is taken up into 
them by an inner and most organic memory 
of which we are unconscious, but which is 
the outer vessel of our immortal state. The 
sun then ministers to this; under divine de- 
sign it is dead in order to its ministry." * 

The spiritual world is the world of causes, 
and the natural world is one of effects flow- 
ing from such causes. The living organisms 
and forms of the spiritual world dispose cor- 
responding forms in the natural world, and 
rest in them. Life flows in through the spir- 
itual forms, into the inert natural forms, 
which it actuates and causes to react. Such 
reaction serves to develope, form, reform and 
perfect the spiritual. 

" Nature is not able to dispose life to anything, for nature in 
itself is totally inert. For the dead thing to act upon the liv- 
ing, or the dead force upon the living force, or what 
is the same, the natural upon the spiritual, is quite 
♦Greater Origins and Issues of Life and Death, pp. 403, 404. 



48 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

against order, and therefore to think it is against the 
light of sane reason. The dead or the natural thing may in- 
deed in many ways be perverted or changed by external acci- 
dents, but yet it cannot act upon life ; but life acts into it ac- 
cording to the change of form induced." * 

We are to think distinctly, therefore, of 
these three things : God, the spiritual world 
and the natural world. God created 
through the spiritual sun, the spiritual 
world, an image and likeness of the infinite 
things in himself which He would put into 
the making of man's spiritual nature. Then 
through the spiritual world He created the 
natural world, an image and likeness of the 
spiritual, and of corresponding things He 
would put into man's earthly nature. The 
end is man, who is a microcosm, embodying 
in himself a little spiritual world and a little 
natural world. 

THE TWO BODIES. 

Man during this life is an inhabitant of 
both worlds. The spirit, which is the real 
man, has its own body organized of spiritual 
substances in the human form, corresponding 
in every organ and sense with the physical 
body. The material body is organized of 
dead substances to be the covering and in- 
strument of the spirit, which is the real 

* Divine Love and Wisdom. N. 166. 



THE TWO BODIES. 



49 



man. What Swedenborg saw, and knew by- 
living experience, he could urge upon ra- 
tional grounds. Thus he says : " All the 
rational life which appears in the body be- 
longs to the spirit ; for the body is material, 
and materiality, which is proper to the body, 
is added, and as it were almost adjoined to 
the spirit, in order that the spirit of man 
may live and perform uses in the natural 
world, whereof all things are material and 
in themselves void of life. And since what 
is material does not live, but only what is 
spiritual, it may be evident that whatever 
lives in man is his spirit, and that the body 
only serves it as an instrument is subser- 
vient to a living force. It is said, indeed, of 
an instrument that it acts, moves, or strikes ; 
but to believe that these acts are those of 
the instrument, and not of him who acts by 
means of it, is a fallacy. Since everything 
that lives in the body, and from life acts and 
feels, belongs exclusively to the spirit, and 
nothing of it to the body, it follows that the 
spirit is the real man, and that the spirit is 
in a form similar to the body ; for every- 
thing in him, from his head to the sole of 
his foot, lives and feels." " From these 
considerations it may be seen that the spirit 



50 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



of man is in a form as well as his body, and 
that its form is the human ; that it enjoys 
senses and sensorieswhen separated from the 
body, just the same as when it was in it ; 
and that all the life of the eye, and all the 
life of the ear, in a word, all the sensative 
life man enjoys belongs not to his body but 
to his spirit ; for his spirit is in them and in 
every minutest part thereof. Hence it is 
that spirits see, hear and feel the same as 
men; but after separation from the body 
their perceptions are all of things in the spirit- 
ual world. The natural sensation he has in 
the physical body is by means of the mate- 
rial which is adjoined to it ; but even then he 
enjoys spiritual sensation at the same time 
by thinking and willing. These observa- 
tions are made in order that the rational 
man may be convinced that man in himself 
is a spirit, and that the corporeal frame 
adjoined to him for the sake of performing 
functions in the natural world, is not the 
man but only an instrument for the use of 
his spirit." * 

The question arises here, as to the reason 
for this connection between the soul and the 
natural body, and the mode of it. In gen- 

* Heaven and Hell. N. 432, et seq. 



THE TWO BODIES. 



51 



eral the answer has been given in what was 
said of the necessity for a dead sun and ma- 
terial world, and man's birth and experience 
in it, as a basis and containent of what is 
spiritual ; and more will follow on this point 
in due course. Dr. Wilkinson has given an 
illustration of the connection of the spirit 
with the body, as to its reasons and modes, 
so striking and helpful that it is introduced 
here at length. 

" The soul is connected with the body for 
the same reason as we are connected with the 
persons, objects, and circumstances that sur- 
round us, and which answer to our wants and 
interests. In a similar manner the body 
answers to the wants of the soul, being 
the soul's wife, the soul's friend, the soul's 
house, the soul's office, the soul's uni- 
verse. It is engaged to the service of the 
soul; shaped into usefulness by the soul's 
ministrations. As the hand shapes the pen, 
and then writes with it, so the soul forms 
the body, and then makes use of the proper- 
ties resulting from the form. The connection 
between the soul and the body is not more 
mysterious than the connection between the 
pen-maker and the pen, excepting that our 
knowledge of the pen is so much more com- 



52 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESP O NDENCE. 

plete than our knowledge of the body. A 
science of the body, had we such that dis- 
played its uses, or its specific fitness to serve 
the soul, would as evidently give the motives 
of the attachment of the soul to the body, as 
the capabilities of the pen account for its con- 
nection with the fingers of the ready writer. 
In both cases it is the bond of service, 
of liking, of utility; for to intelligent 
life what other connecting principle is possi- 
ble ? If this is too simple for philosophers, 
still it is the ground of every connexion they 
themselves form with man or thing. 

"For the purpose of breaking abstruseness 
from the argument, let us look upon the 
natural body as the well furnished house, the 
admirable circumstance and worldly fortune 
of the soul. Then, steadily regarding the 
soul as the man, something like the follow- 
ing analogical discourse may result from this 
point of view, in which we take our stand 
inwards, to gain distance for the object. 

" The soul being the man or real body, the 
natural body represents the appliances and 
arts of life, whether economic or aesthetic. 
The eye is its window, telescope, microscope, 
and answers to the series of means that trans- 
parent substance lends to vision, and which 



THE TWO BODIES. 



53 



are as curious and exquisite for their appear- 
ance as they are excellent for use: for the 
eye receives the finest impressions from 
things, and gives the finest expressions from 
the soul. So likewise the ear is the hearing- 
trumpet of the real body, which would other- 
wise be deaf to the music of nature ; it 
embraces all the means of reverberation, 
whether in the free air, or of cheerful voices 
from household ceiling and walls, or of 
stately sounds from the long-drawn aisle and 
fretted vault : in short, both the whole in- 
strumentality and the whole architecture of 
sound. But the nose is to the real body the 
prophecy of devices that have not yet entered 
into arts ; full as it is of membranous par- 
terres and vacant aviaries for odors ; for 
hitherto, aromas are but casual visitants ; 
they come and go in brief seasons with the 
fitful winds, and where is the vessel that can 
hold them ; hence the nose of flesh is defi- 
cient in circumstance, and we can only iden- 
tify it somewhat barbarously as the scent 
bottle of the real nose. To pass over the 
other senses, we find that the legs are the 
outward art of locomotion, from passive to 
active ; from the nails of the toes to the wheel 
of the knee and the globe of the hip ; in short, 



U THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

from the walking-stick to the railroad ; tlie 
real body uses them in nature, whether as 
the staff of its lowliness, or the means of its 
swiftness, or the equipage of its pride; they 
are the columns of movement ; the rich soul's 
carriage, and the poor soul's crutches. But 
the arms and hands are all the finer machin- 
eries or inventions that are wielded directly 
by the arms and hands of the soul ; they are 
the pen and the sword ; the instrument of 
many strings ; strength and manipulation in 
their bearings ; in short, the mechanics of 
intelligence, whereby nice conveniences of 
truth are gathered in the dwelling of the 
soul. Then the abdomen is its kitchen, pre- 
paring from all things in its indefinite stores 
one universal dish — even the blood of life, to 
be served in repasts for the spiritual man ; 
the viand of viands, varying from hour to 
hour, and suited with more than mathematic 
truth to the appetite and constitution of the 
eater. Then again, the chest distributes with 
a power of wisdom dictated from the halls 
above, this blood, the daily bread and wine 
of the body of the soul, and the wisdom that 
ordained, enters the feast, and it becomes a 
living entertainment. And the brain is the 
steward and keeper of the animated house, 



THE TWO BODIES. 



55 



receiving order and law from the soul or 
brain -man, and transplanting them into its 
mundane economy. Yea, and the brain is 
its natural universe, its wide spread land- 
scapes, its illimitable ocean, its royal library, 
studio, theatre, church, and whatever else is 
a place of universal light and contemplation. 
And lastly, the skin is the dress of the soul 
in every kind, convenient, beautif ul, official ; 
and it is also the very mansion itself ; for our 
houses are but the largest suits, admitting 
our domestic movements. 

"By this artifice of holding out our bodies 
before us, we illustrate in a plain way, the 
connection or Correspondence between the 
soul and the body ; and though there be 
other motives of connection, it is sufficient to 
remark for the present, that by the foregoing 
signs, it is because the body is so replete with 
exquisite convenience, that it is the domestic 
establishment of the soul. Given a tenement 
of the kind, so royal with apparatus, and it 
is impossible that the soul, to whose wants it 
answers, should not live in it, and use, that 
is to say, animate it. If the soul were not a 
tenant on such invitation, it would be stupider 
than the birds and beasts, which are drawn 
by far lesser affinities to their own conven- 
ient lairs." 



bt> THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

" When we speak of the connexion be- 
tween the body and the soul, we are apt at 
first to think, that it is a single link or act, 
but this is an insufficient conception. There 
are as many different modes of connection as 
there are wants in the soul, and organs, parts 
and particles of the body. There are 
as many different modes as there are pos- 
sible species of contact in the great and the 
little creation. The soul is connected in one 
way with the brain, in another with 
the lungs, in another with the belly, 
again in another with the skin. To 
make this clear, recur to the house 
and its furniture. The inhabitant owns 
everything contained in it. Upon one piece 
of furniture he reclines, upon another he 
sits, at another he writes, upon others he 
treads ; some contain his viands, some delight 
him with harmonious sounds, and some look 
down from his walls, and gratify him by arts 
and proportions; and with all these, and 
many more, he is connected. ~Now in each 
case it is the shape, make, form, or proper- 
ties whereby the thing serves its purpose, 
that is the means of his connexion with it. 
If he sits at his desk, it is because it is such 
or such a structure, and serves him for read- 



THE TWO BODIES. 



5? 



ing and writing ; he never makes a mistake 
of sitting for these purposes at his coal-skuttle. 
Apply this to the body, and we find that its 
dweller uses every implement there also ac- 
cording to its form. The reverent soul 
kneels in the knees, because they are natural 
kneelers. The enquiring soul peers through 
the eyes, for they are born windows. The 
make of the organ is the handle whereby the 
inner man grasps and uses it." * 

In general then man lives first in this world 
as to his conscious sensations, plans and de- 
terminations, by virtue of the fact that his 
spiritual body is clothed in a corresponding 
and perfectly adjusted physical body, through 
which his senses open out upon the natural 
world. Its objects and relations thus supply 
him with objects of affection and thought, 
which in the mind become again the object 
of a higher thought and more interior affec- 
tion. At the death of the physical body, 
which consists in such disorder and disar- 
rangements of parts that it no longer corres- 
ponds to the spiritual body, nor fits the mind 
as an instrument, whence the spirit is unable 
to inflow and actuate it, then the man awakes 
to sensible cognizance of the objects of the 

* Human Body and its connection with Man ; pp. 269-272. 



58 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



spiritual world. During this life, however, 
he is as to his spirit present in the spiritual 
world, though not sensibly perceiving it; and 
is in unconscious association with spirits who 
have put off the material body and live con- 
sciously in that world. By means of such 
unconscious association with spirits, affec- 
tions, thoughts, ideas and impressions are 
awakened, formed, modified and multiplied 
in man, and adopted by him as his own in 
freedom according to the thought of his 
reason. 

MENTAL PHENOMENA. 

Spirits do not know that they are with 
man, any more than man knows he is with 
spirits. Both may know it in a general way 
from doctrine, but neither perceives the other 
under ordinary conditions. Spirits perceive 
man's thoughts and feel his affections as their 
own, and think of them as in their own 
minds, and thus modify, multiply and extend 
them in their own experience. This action 
of the spirits with man is in turn communi- 
cated to his mind; then thoughts and affec- 
tions flow in and are perceived by him as his 
own. This fact, together with certain laws 
of the spiritual world, being known, mental 



MENTAL PHENOMENA. 



phenomena, which have been found perplex- 
ing, are easily explained. 

Space and time, for example, in the spir- 
itual world, are not fixed and permanent, 
irrespective of the percipient, but are depend- 
ent upon the changing states of the spirits 
and angels. This distinction between the 
two worlds has already been pointed out, and 
referred to the law that one world is alive 
and the other dead. It results that thought 
directed to another brings presence, and 
thought from affection or desire brings asso- 
ciation and conjunction of minds. You can- 
not love the same evil without having its 
infernal crew for your intimate bosom com- 
panions; and the thoughts the activities of 
your love awaken in them, will be commu- 
nicated to your own minds. You cannot 
love any heavenly good, or think any divine 
truth which is an object of angelic thought and 
love, without bringing the angels present and 
the activities of their love into your own mind. 

Then again, phenomena in the spiritual 
world are produced by the projection of the 
states of the beholders upon its background 
of substance, and are more or less permanent 
according to the permanence of the states 
producing them. 



60 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



1. There are the real appearances and 
scenery of that world produced from the 
common and abiding states of those who 
inhabit and use them, and continuing with 
modifications according to the variations of 
those states. The heavenly habitations, for 
example, are permanent because the funda- 
mental states of the dwellers in them are 
permanent; but they are constantly varying 
like living things, because the fundamental 
states of character are ever experiencing vari- 
ations. 

2. There are also in the spiritual world 
representative forms capable of being pro- 
duced and modified at will for specific pur- 
poses, as if an artist might project his ideal 
upon the canvas without brush or pigments, 
by willing and thinking it there. 

3. There are also, magical representations 
capable of being produced in the same way, 
which represent no reality, but only the 
phantasy which, for evil purposes, mischiev- 
ous spirits desire to induce and make ap- 
pear as real. 

It will appear then from man's ud conscious 
association with spirits, and these universal 
facts of the spiritual world, how certain men- 
tal phenomena are to be explained. 



MENTAL PHEMOMENA. 



61 



Man being as to his spirit in the spiritual 
world, in unconscious association with spirits 
there, who were once men and women on 
earth, the activities of their affection and 
thought flow in to excite, accelerate, and 
modify in a thousand ways man's thoughts, 
ideas and feelings. Affections are excited, 
thoughts called forth and others injected; 
and they are entertained, and rejected or ac- 
cepted, according to man's will and bent, as 
his own. Thence come not only the poet's 
inspiration, the author's flight of imagination, 
the inventor's insight, and the merchant's 
foresight, but all forms of mental activity in 
wakefulness and sleep, in sound and unsound 
minds, as man's dominant purpose determines 
his spiritual associates. His associates will 
be such as correspond to the affections of 
his love which determine his thoughts. The 
spirits with him are of the same general 
state as he is ; good spirits associated with 
heaven, and operating into and by corre- 
sponding affections and thoughts good and 
true ; and evil spirits associated with hell, 
and operating into and by corresponding 
evil affections and appetites, and falsities and 
fallacies. 

The phenomena of dreams have in this 



62 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



their explanation. Sleep being partial 
through any of many possible mental and 
physical conditions, associate spirits ap- 
proach, and carry on a train of thought 
previously engaged in, or inject by their own 
thinking new and incongruous ones, and 
present real or fantastic images to the sight 
of the imagination. The will being uncon- 
scious, and an abnormal state giving them 
access to the mental organism, they can do 
with, and present before the mind, what 
they will. 

Man's freedom and rationality being im- 
paired by mental conditions, caused by a 
disorderly life or by some injury to the 
mind's instrument, the physical brain, as in 
the various forms of insanity, spirits can 
possess and dictate his actions according to 
their conceits, even in direct opposition to 
his prevailing character before disease. 

As a man in a mob without the guidance 
of reason may do what the mob wills and im. 
pels ; so a man may from mental causes 
bring himself into spiritual associations? 
which, in a moment of excitement or sudden 
provocation will prove too strong for his 
judgment, and carry him away into a fit of 
so-called " emotional insanity." By harbor- 



MENTAL PHENOMENA. 



63 



ing hatred and revenge, and brooding over 
a special grievance, or by habitual indulgence 
of passion, man associates with himself spir- 
its who may in a moment tear him away from 
all thought of res train t ; and lash him into 
the act of murder. So of other passions. So 
on a high tower, if he dwells with fear on 
the possibility of falling. So in the presence 
of an epidemic of disease, or of any danger, 
if he dwells upon the subject long or mor- 
bidly, he puts himself into the power of 
spirits, and, becoming a prey to the panic 
which they induce, arrests or disorders the 
common influx into the bodily organs, and 
opens the way for evil spirits to flow in and 
control the functions of both mind and body. 

It has been said that though man even 
while living in this world is in the midst of 
spirits, yet the spirits are not aware that they 
are with man, any more than he is conscious 
of their presence. " The reason is that they 
are conjoined immediately as to the affect- 
ions of the will, and mediately as to the 
thoughts of the understanding ; for man 
thinks naturally and spirits think spiritually, 
and natural thought and spiritual make one 
only by correspondence. " MediumsMp y as 
in spiritualism, clairvoyance, and occult 



64 



THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



adeptship, constitutes an infraction of this 
order. In such cases spirits invade man's 
consciousness through the consent or col- 
lapse of his freedom and rationality. They 
enter into his thought and memory, and thus 
possess £nd control all his mental and bodily 
faculties. The controling spirit once having 
gained posession of the will and memory of 
the medium, may talk or write under any 
name, relate events, locate stolen property, 
or reveal anything within the contents of 
the memory of the medium, or any person or 
spirit present ; he may, from his superior 
knowledge of causes and their tendency to 
results, even foretell events to an extent. 
He can induce subjective states which, flow- 
ing down into the plane of sense, become il- 
lusions and apparitions, which are perceived 
as altogether real things ; and so far as any 
persons bring themselves into consulting 
sympathy with the medium and his controll- 
ing spirits, these illusions may be induced 
upon them also, so that they would believe 
and declare the sensation to be objectively 
real, when it is not in the least so. The old 
necromancy and enchantment, when not the 
pretense of wicked men, was the trick of 
wicked spirits performed in this way through 



MENTAL PHENOMENA. 



65 



susceptible mediums. Such communication 
is fraught with danger to the soul, because 
u when spirits thus speak with man they are 
in the same principles as the man with whom 
they speak, whether they are true or false ; 
and further, they call them into activity, and 
by means of their own affection conjoined to 
that of the man strongly confirm them." 
Hence it is evident that the spirits who speak 
with man, or operate manifestly upon him, 
are similar to himself ; in similar affection? 
and thus in similar thought; and as when 
" the blind lead the blind, both fall into the 
ditch," they can only confirm each other in 
their common principles. 

Mesmerism belongs to the same class of 
phenomena, only in this case the control is 
limited to the will and knowledge of the 
mesmerizer, who can only impress his own 
thoughts and determinations on the subject, 
but can not enter into his memory unless he 
be at the same time a mind-reader. 

Mind-reading and thought transference is 
often the result of undeveloped mediumship, 
and is accomplished by means of spirits who 
take from one and give to the other. It is 
possible, however, for one mind in full pos 
session of itself and utterly free from trance 



66 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



to receive impressions from and give im- 
pressions to another mind. It is the common 
law of the spiritual world, and only requires 
a sensitive subject capable of a degree of 
abstraction from the bodily senses. Spirits 
are always communicating their thoughts, 
and reading ours as their own ; and given 
a fit subject with attention fixed upon an- 
other with strong desire to read what is in 
his mind, or with thought determined to 
another in strong desire to impress it, and 
he may take or give as really, if not as 
readily, as if both were in the spirit. 

Co-incidences, "premonitions and warnings 
are to be similarly explained. Spirit com- 
municates with spirit, in the common atmos- 
phere of the spiritual world, with a whole 
company of sympathizing spirits living en- 
tirely in that world, to help on the commu- 
nication. Impressions conveyed in this way 
may be perceived even as sensations, though 
no natural sight or sound, or other bodily 
sensation, is actually produced, but only the 
appearance of such, presented subjectively 
and perceived in the mental plane of the 
senses 

SOURCES OP INFLUX. 

It will be seen from the foregoing that the 



SOURCES OF INFLUX. 



67 



spiritual world is the source of all the life of 
man in nature, invisibly influencing the 
course of all things here. " The spiritual 
world contains, and in a manner consists of 
all the men and women who have ever died 
on earth. They are an all -prevalent plane of 
induction over us, most closely united to us 
by our individual and special correspond- 
ence with them." The spiritual world con- 
sists of Heaven, Hell and the world of spir- 
its, intermediate between them. It is thus 
divided by the necessary separation of the 
wholly good from the wholly evil, and of 
both from those who are in the undeveloped 
state which belongs to men on earth and 
spirits recently entered into the spiritual 
world. Let us endeavor now to understand 
this distinction. Man in the world lives two 
lives ; one internal and the other external ; 
for he can think one thing and say another, 
or will one thing and do another. One is 
the life of the interiors and the other of the 
exteriors of his spirit ; for what the body 
does, is only an effect from the interiors and 
exteriors of his spirit, since the body is only 
an instrument. From external thought and 
affection one may talk of love to the neigh- 
bor and love to God, when yet in his inter- 



68 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

nal affection and thought he neither fears 
God nor cares for his neighbor. He may 
also see and judge of his exterior thought 
from the interior ; he may see the evils of 
his external life and judge and combat them 
them from interior purpose. On the other 
hand he may see what is just and right from 
interior thought, and from exterior thought 
and affection incline to the opposite. He 
may even love what is just and right as to 
his interiors, and yet in his exterior thought 
and affection from want of instruction or from 
the power of habit, or failure to conquer and 
conform the exterior to the interior, he may 
do things contrary to what is just and right. 
All men in this life are more or less in 
this conflict, or non-correspondence, between 
the interior and exterior life. They enter 
the spiritual world in this mixed state of 
good and evil, truth and falsity. Their judg- 
ment consists in the revelation of the quality 
of their ruling, which is the interior, love; 
and in reducing exteriors into conformity 
with it, and in their further instruction and 
preparation for heaven if good, or on the con- 
trary for their final home among the evil in 
hell. 

All men pass first, therefore, into an inter- 



SOURCES OF INFLUX. 



69 



mediate world of spirits, where they are 
judged, instructed, disciplined and prepared 
for their final home. This is a gradual work, 
requiring many changes of state, answering 
to a lapse of time with us. When we con- 
sider the immense number constantly enter- 
ing the spiritual world, one, it has been 
estimated, with every swing of the pendulum ; 
when we consider the state of most, their 
ignorance of spiritual things, their involve- 
ment in complex thoughts and affections, and 
how few of even the interiorly good are in 
the knowledge and life necessary to bring 
their exterior life into harmony and corres- 
pondence with their interior will and purpose ; 
the changes, and the lapse of time necessary 
for the working out of the interior love into 
the whole exterior life and thought, — we may 
form some conception of the multitudinous 
population of the world of spirits, and the 
complex influences upon human minds of 
which it is the source. It is in immediate 
association with this world of recently de- 
parted spirits, that man as to his spirit lives. 

The first state of man in the world of 
spirits is similar to his state in society here, 
except an increased sense of life and freedom 
above what he enjoyed in this world. He 



70 THE SCIENCE OP CORRESPONDENCE. 

observes how others speak and act, and 
adapts himself to them, and to his surround- 
ings, as he had been used to do in the world, 
by the exteriors of his spirit. He inquires 
for friends, meets them and talks with them. 
He learns about the nature and laws of that 
world; and as he becomes accustomed to his 
new life his sense of freedom is increased, 
and where he felt obliged to conceal and dis. 
semble his affections and thoughts he finds 
himself less inclined, and is less able to do so. 
The pressure of his interior life to express 
itself reveals the state of his ruling love and 
brings the exteriors into conformity with it. 
He must become the form of his own love 
and nothing else. Everything that is not in 
agreement with it must be cast off. This is 
the divinely appointed order; and this is the 
judgment. Thus the evil are separated from 
the good, and man comes into his own life 
and remains in it forever. It is the life of hell 
with those who have loved themselves and 
the world above all things; and it is the life 
of heaven with those who have loved the 
Lord above all, and their neighbor as them- 
selves. The evil cast themselves into hell; 
and the good, after preparation by instruc- 
tion, are conducted under the Lord's auspices 
to their place in heaven. 



SOURCES OF INFLUX. 



71 



There are three heavens and innumerable 
societies in each, arranged according to the 
varieties of love and intelligence with the 
angels. So also with the hells which are the 
inversion of the heavens. The angels are 
happy because they are in a state of order, 
their interiors and exteriors being in corres- 
pondence, in conjunction with the Lord, in 
harmony with each other, and surrounded by 
corresponding forms of order and beauty. 
But the wicked spirits are unhappy in hell, 
because they are in a state of disorder, at 
enmity against the Lord, in conflict with each 
other, and surrounded by the forms of 
their internal barrenness of life and desolation 
of delight.* 

The life of the Lord through heaven, flows 
into the good in the world of spirits; and thus 
by them is adapted to man. The life of the 
Lord perverted into the opposite in the hells, 
flows into the interiorly evil in the world of 
spirits ; and thus, by them is applied to the 
evils and falsities in man, exciting, confirming 
and augmenting them. 

Thus all men are subject to influx in "three 
great directions, namely : laterally, vertically 
and abyssally. The vertical influx is from 

*Manual of Doctrine, pp. 57-58. 



72 



THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



heaven, which maintains all order and keeps 
all things alive. The lateral influx is from 
the world of spirits; and from the good and 
evil populations on the earth in connection 
with them. The abyssal influences are from 
the hells, from which disease and death per- 
petually assault us. All these are of human 
conditions, and are virtually 4 in us, from us, 
and of us.' They are firmaments of influx 
above and below, and operate by induction; 
they are forces of influx at the sides, and act 
by spiritual pressure. Hence it is that evil 
powers operate generally and not according 
to the lives of individuals. Wherever a 
swamp and putridity of circumstance lies, 
they are congenially attracted, and godly and 
godless folk are smitten if they dwell upon 
that region. All who do not dwell there, if 
they correspond to the infernal influences in 
their lives and characters, will in the here- 
after likewise perish.' "* 

CORRESPONDENCE AND INFLUX. 

We are now prepared to enter more fully 
into the consideration of Correspondence and 
influx. Correspondence is of the natural 
world with the spiritual ; of the internal with 
the external. It is the law of the causal 

*Greater origins and issues of Life and Death, pp. 41-42. 



CORRESPONDENCE AND INFLUX. 73 



relation of the two worlds ; and thus of causes 
and effects in either world separately. The 
whole natural world corresponds to the 
whole spiritual world; and every single thing 
in the natural world to something in the 
spiritual world which is its cause. Thus 
heat corresponds to love, and light to wis- 
dom; the heart corresponds to the will and 
the affections, and the lungs to the under- 
standing and its thoughts. "The spiritual 
term is on one side and the natural on the 
other, and the two are equated ; what love is 
in the spiritual world and in man, that heat 
is in the natural world and in the human 
body ; what the will and the affections are in 
the soul, that the heart and the streaming 
arteries are in the body; what the under- 
standing and the thoughts are in the mind 
that the lungs and their internal ramifica- 
tions and air-cells, and their breaths and 
breathings, are in the deep places of the chest. 
Everything, in short, corresponds to some 
spiritual thing ; is in active partnership with 
it; and could not long exist without it." 

All and everything in the created universe 
has such correspondence with man that it 
may be said that man is a little universe. 
All and everything in man which is accord- 



74 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



ing to order, is an image and correspondent 
of God- Man. Correspondence is, therefore, 
first between God, who is Absolute Man, 
and the whole heaven, which is in the human 
form from Him. God is very Man. In the 
heavens there is no other idea of God but 
the idea of a Man; because the divine prin- 
ciples which cause the angels to be angels ? 
taken together are God, and every angel is a 
man, and every angelic society is in the human 
form, and the whole heaven is a Grand Man, 
from correspondence with His Infinite Man- 
hood. An Eternal Mind is an eternal Man. 
This is the God of Revelation, who is a 
Divine Person of Infinite Love and Wisdom, 
capable of showing Himself to men as a 
Divine Man, and desiring to be known and 
worshipped as a loving and wise God in 
human form. "God is Man," is the postulate 
of reason also. Nothing proceeds out of any- 
thing except it first be in it; and the spiritual 
and natural worlds conspiring to the human 
form, and to the service of men and angels, 
who are "men in lighter garment clad," can 
only proceed from a God who is Absolute 
Man, and who produces from Himself more 
and more perfect images of His Manhood. 
In the work on Heaven and Hell, Sweden- 



CORRESPONDENCE AND INFLUX. 75 



borg shows in order: I. 1 hat the Lord i. e. 
the Lord Jesus Christ, who is Jehovah in 
His Divine Humanity, is the God of heaven. 
II. That the Divine of the Lord, i. e. the 
divine love and wisdom proceeding from 
Him, makes heaven. III. That heaven con- 
sists of innumerable societies ; and that every 
society is a heaven in less form, and every 
angel in least. IV. That every angel is in a 
perfect human form ; every society of angels, 
in a larger and more perfect human form; 
and the whole heaven in one complex, as one 
Grand Man. All this because the Lord 
who is God Man creates men images and 
likenesses of Himself as to the human form, 
with indefinite varieties of that form; so 
that when brought into true order by re- 
generation, each may image the Lord differ- 
ently from all others, and out of the har- 
mony this variety, may be constituted one 
grand image and likeness of the infinite things 
in the Lord. Thus it is that the whole heaven 
corresponds on the one hand to the Lord, 
and on the other to the human form, or to 
the members, organs and viscera in man. 
On the one hand the spiritual organic 
form of the angel, corresponds to principles 
in the Lord and from Him ; and because 



1Q THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

there is correspondence there is influx and 
reception of those principles. It is thus the 
life of the Lord makes the life of the angel, 
not by continuity but by correspondence ; by 
similarity of form, and co-operation of the 
form actuated with the principle actuating. 
On the other hand the angelic form corre- 
sponds to some specific organic form in the 
human body, and the life of the angel to the 
function of that organ. And as all the 
members and organs of the body are grouped 
and related according to function to the 
whole human form and orderly life of man ; 
so the angels are associated according to 
similarity of life, and related to the whole 
human form, by the Divine Human of the 
Lord which flows in and is received by 
each according to his relation to the whole. 
By correspondence with the Lord, heaven 
receives His life, each for all and all for 
each; by correspondence with the human 
form, all things in man subsist through 
heaven from the Lord. 

This explanation is offered to guard 
against the conclusion that because the Lord 
is the only life, therefore the life of angel 
or man is the Lord's life, and that man or 
angel is the Lord. The Lord is the only 



CORRESPONDENCE AND INFLUX. 77 



life, and angels are only recipient forms of 
that life; they are recipients of it be- 
cause their angelic forms correspond. When 
the divine life with its goods and truths, 
flows into the corresponding angelic forms, 
it take on new forms and functions which 
are angelic life; when this life again flows 
down into the corresponding forms of man's 
natural mind, it is neither divine nor angelic 
life, but it corresponds to them, i. e., it takes 
on new forms and functions which are man's 
natural life ; and finally, when life flows down 
into the corresponding organs of the body, it 
takes on new forms and functions corre- 
sponding with the others but distinct from 
them. The idea of the Lord and of heaven, 
and of the organs and functions of the body, 
is therefore to be an idea of distinct things 
which correspond ; the external is an image 
of the internal, and the life and function it 
receives is on its own plane like that of the 
internal on its plane. Correspondence is of 
the Lord with heaven ; thus of the highest 
heaven with the middle heaven, of the 
middle heaven with the lowest ; then a 
correspondence of heaven with the corporeal 
forms in man, which are called his organs, 
members and viscera. This correspondence 



78 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



is described by Swedenborg, as follows, in 
the work on " Heaven and Hell": 

" Heaven is distinguished into two king- 
doms, of which one is called the celestial 
kingdom, and the other the spiritual king- 
dom. The celestial kingdom in general 
corresponds to the heart, and to all things 
of the heart in the whole body; and the 
spiritual kingdom to the lungs, and to all 
things of the lungs in the whole body. The 
heart and the lungs also make two kingdoms 
in man ; the heart reigns there by the arteries 
and veins, and the lungs by the tendinous 
and motor fibres, both of them in every force 
and action. In every man, in his spiritual 
world, which is called his spiritual man, 
there are also two kingdoms ; one is of the 
will and the other is of the understanding; 
the will reigns by the affections of good, and 
the understanding by the affections of truth: 
these kingdoms also correspond to the king- 
doms of the heart and lungs in the body. 
In like manner in the heavens : the celestial 
kingdom is the voluntary of heaven, and 
there the good of love reigns ; and the spiri- 
tual kingdom is the intellectual of heaven, 
and there truth reigns : these are what corre- 
spond to the functions of the heart and lungs 



CORRESPONDENCE AND INFLUX. 79 



in man. It is from that correspondence 
that heart in the Word signifies will, and 
also the good of love; and the breath of the 
lungs, understanding, and the truth of faith. 
Hence also it is that the affections are as- 
cribed to the heart, although they are not in 
it nor from it. 

(i The correspondence of the two kingdoms 
of heaven with the heart and lungs, is the 
general correspondence of heaven with man ; 
but there is a less general one with each of 
his members, organs, and viscera; what this 
is shall also be mentioned. Those who are 
in the head, in the Greatest Man, which is 
heaven, are in all good more than the Kest ; 
for they are in love, peace, innocence, wis- 
dom, intelligence, and thence in joy and 
happiness ; these flow into the head and into 
those things which are of the head with man, 
and correspond to them. Those who are in 
the breast, in the Greatest Man, which is 
heaven, are in the good of charity and faith, 
and they likewise flow into the breast of 
man, and correspond to it. But those who 
are in the loins, and in the organs devoted 
to generation there, in the Greatest Man or 
heaven, are in conjugal love. Those who 
are in the feet, are in the lowest good of 



80 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



heaven, which good is called natural- 
spiritual. Those who are in the arms and 
hands, are in the power of truth from good. 
Those who are in the eyes, are in under, 
standing. Those who are in the ears, are in 
hearing and obedience. Those who are in 
the nostrils, are in perception. Those who 
are in the mouth and tongue, are in dis- 
coursing from understanding and per- 
ception. Those who are in the kidneys, are 
in truth which examines, separates and cor- 
rects. Those who are in the liver, pancreas, 
and spleen, are in the various purification of 
good and truth: and so with the rest. 
They all flow into the like things of man, 
and correspond to them. The influx of 
heaven is into the functions and uses of the 
members ; and the uses, because they are 
from the spiritual world, form themselves 
by such things as are in the natural world, 
and thus set themselves forth in the effect ; 
thence is Correspondence. 

" Hence it is that by those same members, 
organs, and viscera, in the Word such 
things are signified ; for all things there 
have signification according to Correspon- 
dences. Thus by head is signified intelli- 
gence and wisdom; by breast, charity; by 



CORRESPONDENCE AND INFLUX. 81 



loins, conjugal love ; by arms and hands, the 
power of truth ; by feet, the natural ; by 
eyes, understanding ; by nostrils, perception ; 
by ears, obedience ; by kidneys, the exam- 
ination of truth; and so forth. Hence also 
it is that it is usual for a man to say of one 
who is intelligent and wise, that he has a 
head ; of one who is in charity, that he is a 
bosom friend ; of one who is in pereei3tion, 
that he has a quick scent; of one who is in 
intelligence, that he has a sharp sight ; of one 
who is in power, that he has long arms ; of 
one who wills from love, that it is from the 
heart. These and many other things, which 
are in man's speech, are from Correspondence; 
for such things are from the spiritual world, 
although man is ignorant of it. 

" But though all things of man, as to the 
body, correspond to all things of heaven, 
still man is not an image of heaven as to ex- 
ternal form, but as to the internal form, for 
the interiors of man receive heaven, and his 
exteriors receive the world. As far there- 
fore as his interiors receive heaven, so far 
man as to them is a heaven in least forim ac- 
cording to the image of the greatest; but as 
far as his interiors do not receive, so far he is 
not a heaven and an image of the greatest: 



82 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

yet still the exteriors, which receive the 
world, may be in a form according to the 
order of the world, and hence in various 
beanty. For external beanty, which is of 
the body, derives its cause from the parents 
and from formation in the womb, and after- 
wards is preserved by a common influx from 
the world ; hence it is, that the form of the 
natural man differs very much from the form 
of his spiritual man. Sometimes it has been 
shown what the spirit of man was in form, 
and it was seen, that in some who were 
beautiful and handsome in the face, it was 
deformed, black, and monstrous, so that you 
would call it an image of hell, not of heaven ; 
but in some who were not beautiful, that it 
was well formed, fair and angelic. The 
spirit of man also appears after death, such 
as it had been in the body, when it lived in 
the world."* 

In explanation of this last paragraph, it 
should be borne in mind that there is a 
general correspondence of the things of the 
body with heaven, and that all things in 
order receive a common influx ; whereas the 
disorderly things of man's natural mind 
correspond with hell, and receive influx 

♦Heaven and Hell, n. 87—102, 



CORRESPONDENCE AND INFLUX. 83 



thence. While therefore the bodily forms 
and functions correspond in general with 
the Grand Man, or heaven, and are kept in 
life and order thence by common influx ; 
they also correspond with the forms and 
functions of man's natural mind, which are 
in disorder and, before regeneration, in 
correspondence with the hells and animated 
by influx from evil spirits. In so far, there- 
fore, as man's will and thought are evil, he 
is in correspondence with evil spirits who 
infest, excite and pour in their evil spheres 
into his mind; and as hell is the opposite 
of heaven, and corresponds to the per- 
verted functions of the human form, these 
evil spheres tend to infest and disorder the 
bodily functions; though it is of divine 
order, that corporeal things should be ex- 
empt from particular influx. We are told 
how the conjunction of heaven with the 
world and with the human form is effected 
and preserved, and of the way in which 
man may by the states of his life co-operate 
with common influx through heaven or 
disturb it. 

"The kingdom of the Lord is a kingdom 
of ends which are uses ; or what is the same, 
a kingdom of uses which are ends. There- 



84 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



fore the universe was so created and formed 
by the Divine, that nses may everywhere be 
clothed with such things as to be set forth in 
act or in effect, in heaven first, and then in 
the world; thus by degrees and successively 
even to the ultimates of nature. Hence it is 
manifest that the correspondence of natural 
things with spiritual, or of the world with 
heaven, is effected by uses, and that uses 
conjoin; and that the forms with which uses 
are clothed, are so far Correspondences, and 
so far conjunctions, as they are forms of 
uses. In the nature of the world, in its 
triple kingdom, all things which there exist 
according to order, are forms of uses, or 
effects formed from use for use ; wherefore the 
things which are there, are Correspondences. 
With respect to man, as far as he lives ac- 
cording to divine order, thus as far as in love 
to the Lord and in charity towards the neigh- 
bor, so far his acts are uses in form, and are 
correspondences, by which he is conjoined to 
heaven: to love the Lord and the neighbor 
in general is to perform uses. Farther, it is 
to be known, that it is man by means of 
whom the natural world is conjoined with the 
spiritual, or that he is the medium of con- 
junction : for in him there is a natural world. 



CORRESPONDENCE AND INFLUX. 85 



and also there is a spiritual world; where- 
fore as far as man is spiritual, so far he is a 
medium of conjunction ; but as far as he is 
natural and not spiritual, so far he is not a 
medium of conjunction. Still there continues, 
without man as a medium, a divine influx 
into the world, and also into those things 
which are from the world with man, but 
not into his rational. 

" As all things which are according to 
divine order, correspond to heaven, so all 
things which are contrary to divine order, 
correspond to hell. The things which 
correspond to heaven all have relation to 
good and truth ; those which correspond to 
hell, to evil and the false."* 

The spiritual body is in form and qual- 
ity like the mind, being inwardly pure and 
orderly if the mind be so, and outwardly 
beautiful and healthy; while on the other 
hand if the mind be evil and disorderly the 
spiritual body is inwardly defiled and out- 
wardly deformed and diseased. And since 
the natural body corresponds with the spiri- 
tual body and derives influx from it, with the 
adult sufficiently advanced in years it becomes 
in quality more or less like the mind. Evils 

♦Heaven and Hell, N. 112, 113. 



86 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



and falsities, therefore, attract infernal spirits 
who induce disorders in the spiritual body, 
whence they are derived into the interior 
fluids of the natural body, with a continual 
tendency to disease. 4 'Every disease incident 
to the human race, comes from sin; every 
disease also corresponds to its own evil ; be- 
cause everything of the life of man comes 
from the spiritual world, wherefor if his 
spiritual life becomes diseased, evil is also 
thence derived into his natural life and be- 
comes a disease there."* 

"The reason why diseases have correspon- 
dence with those who are in the hells is because 
diseases correspond to the lusts and passions 
of the mind. These are the origins of 
disease; for the common origins of disease 
are intemperance, luxuries of various kinds, 
corporeal pleasures, also envyings, hatreds, 
revenges, lasciviousness, and the like, which 
destroy a man's interiors, and when these are 
destroyed the exteriors suffer and draw him 
into disease and death." Thence it is mani- 
fest, diseases also have correspondence with 
the spiritual world, but with the hells which 
are opposite to heaven. All the infernals 
induce disease but with a difference, accord- 

*Areana Coelestia, n. 8364. 



CORRESPONDENCE AND INFLUX, Si 



ing to their correspondence with the members, 
organs and viscera. "They act from what is 
opposite. Heaven, which is the Grand Man, 
keeps all things in connection and safety ; 
hell as being in the opposite destroys and 
rends all things asunder; consequently if the 
infernals are applied they induce disease." 
They are conjunctively associated with the 
mind so far as it is in evil and falsity, and 
thence infest the body. "Evil closes the 
smallest and altogether invisible vessels, of 
which the next greater which are also invis- 
ible are composed ; for the smallest and 
invisible vessels are continued to a man's in- 
teriors. Hence comes the first and inmost 
obstruction, and hence the first and inmost 
vitiation of the blood ; this when it increases 
causes disease, and at length death. If man 
had lived the life of good, his interiors would 
be open to heaven, and through heaven to 
the Lord ; thus also the smallest and invis- 
ible vessels would be without disease, and 
would only decrease to old age ; and when 
the body could no longer minister to his 
spirit he would pass without disease out of 
his earthly body into a body such as the 
angels have, thus out of the world immediate- 
ly into heaven."* 

*Areana Coelestia, n. 5712, 5726. 



88 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

Why are not the bodies of the wicked, it 
may be asked, as much denied and deformed 
with natural impurity and disease as their 
minds with moral and spiritual impurity? 
The answer is in the teaching above quoted 
concerning the general influx from heaven 
into the corresponding externals of the body 
providing that the corporeals of man shall 
not be controlled by the particular spirits 
attendant on him. In the evil the vital fluids 
of the body are always more or less defiled, 
diseased and infested. "Whatever health or 
beauty appertains to them is secured by a 
general heavenly influx, from the correspond- 
ing parts of heaven, directly into the ex- 
teriors of the body. 

Evil spirits flow in also by all poisons, 
noxious and hurtful things introduced from 
nature, for these correspond to evil, and are 
produced by correspondence from the hells. 
And when disease is induced evil spirits then 
flow into the unclean things belonging to the 
disease, which correspond to their own evil 
loves. Their sphere induces anxiety of mind, 
fear, lusts, cravings and passions, by which 
again, if not cast off, they defile the vital 
fluid. 



CORRESPONDENCE AND INFLUX. 80 

It was said above that all things which are 
according to divine order correspond to 
heaven, and those which are contrary to order 
correspond to hell. "Whatsoever is in man ; 
whether it be in the external man or the in- 
ternal, has correspondence with the Grand 
Man. Withont correspondence with the 
Grand Man, that is heaven, (or with the 
spiritual world, which is in correspondence 
with heaven or in the opposite) nothing in 
anywise exists or subsists, for the reason that 
it has not any connection with what is prior 
to itself, thus neither with the first, that is, 
with the Lord. What is unconnected, and 
thereby independent cannot subsist a single 
moment; for the cause of subsistence is con- 
nection with and dependence upon that 
from which is the all of existence. Hence it 
is that not only all and everything belonging 
to man corresponds, but also all and every- 
thing in the universe."* 

The angels in one complex, as a Grand 
Man, correspond to the Lord, and thus 
infinite things from the Lord flow in accord- 
ing to correspondence. These infinite 
things become in the angels of heaven in- 



* Arcana Coelestia, N. 5377. 



90 THE SCIENCE OP CORRESPONDENCE. 

definite varieties of affection and thought, 
and consequent determinations to use. Ail 
these affections and thoughts of the life of 
the angels are the causes in and by which 
the inflowing divine life creates the objects 
of the heavenly world. The phenomenal 
world of heaven corresponds in every par- 
ticular with the affections and perceptions of 
the angels. Land and sky ; gardens, groves, 
flowers and fruits ; animals and birds ; habi- 
tations, and, in short, all things similar to 
those in the natural world, are there; and 
all are created from the Lord as a first 
cause, through the affections and perceptions 
of the angels as efficient causes. Every- 
thing in heaven, therefore, is in order from 
the Lord and corresponds with the life of 
the angels received from the Lord. All 
things there stand out around the angels, 
and around the angelic societies as produced 
or created by them. Those things which 
correspond to their permanent states remain 
constant; and those which correspond to 
varying states come, change and go with the 
affections and thoughts through which they 
are produced. The universe of heaven thus 
corresponds with the affections and percep- 
tions of the internal man, and through these 



CORRESPONDENCE AND INFLUX. 91 



with the infinite things of the Divine love 
and wisdom. 

There is with man, however, not only an 
internal mind, but an external mind adapting 
him to life in the world first and then in 
the world of spirits which is below heaven. 
When man rises out of the world of spirits 
into heaven, the seat of his consciousness is 
elevated to his internal mind ; but while it 
remains in the external mind he is in the 
world of spirits. Now this external mind 
corresponds to the internal mind, and thus is 
connected with the Lord ; it also creates a 
world of things around itself and beholds its 
affections and thoughts reflected in corre- 
sponding phenomena. These creations of 
the world of spirits lie next within the uni- 
verse of nature, and are the causes and corre- 
spondences of the forces, forms and uses in 
nature. It is thus the Lord operates through 
heaven and the world of spirits to produce 
all things in order from Himself, and to 
sustain and keep all things in order, in 
heaven, in the world of spirits, and on the 
earth respectively. " Nothing is given in 
the created world which has not correspond- 
ence with something in the spiritual world, 
and which does not there in its own manner 



&2 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

represent something of the Lord's king- 
dom." "The affections of the Lord's love 
are infinite, and the perceptions of his wis- 
dom are infinite ; and of these all and every- 
thing that appears upon the earth are 
correspondences." In the spiritual world 
there are similar correspondences with those 
who receive affections and perceptions from 
the Lord ; there instantaneously created 
according to the affections of the angels, and 
here in like manner at the beginning, but 
clothed with the dead matter of the atmos- 
pheres and earths, and continued by pro- 
creations for the sake of permanence and 
re-action. And since all things in order in 
the natural world correspond to the affections 
and perceptions of the Divine love and wis- 
dom, and thus to the creations thence in the 
spiritual world through the minds of those 
who are there, they also correspond to the 
affections and thoughts of man's mind. 
Thus the earth in general corresponds to 
man as a whole ; its various products which 
serve for the nourishment and sustenance of 
the human race correspond to the various 
kinds of good and truth which nourish the 
life of affection and thought. Animals 
correspond to affections ; the useful and 



CORRESPONDENCE AND INFLUX. 93 



gentle to good affections, and the furious 
and hurtful to evil affections. Birds corre- 
spond to thoughts ; the good and beautiful to 
true thoughts, and birds of night and of prey 
to false thoughts. Trees and shrubs and 
grasses correspond to different kinds and 
degrees of intelligence and knowledge. The 
metals, as gold and silver correspond the 
one to heavenly good and the other to spiri- 
tual truth ; brass, to natural good, and iron 
to natural truth ; and common stones to sen- 
sual truths, while the precious stones corre- 
spond to varieties of spiritual truth. 

Now, since the earth and everything on it 
corresponds to the Lord and the infinite 
things of His love and wisdom, and thus to 
heaven and all things there which are corre- 
spondences of the affections and perceptions 
of love and wisdom, it follows that there is 
an influx from the Lord through heaven, sus- 
taining and ordering all things for use accord- 
ing to the degree and respect in which they 
are related to man and through man to the 
Lord. And, since on the other hand, they 
correspond to the affections and thoughts of 
man's life, and thus to the spiritual world 
which is the outbirth and correspondent of 
his natural mind, it follows that all evil 



94 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



affections and thoughts pervert the inflowing 
life, and tend to disturb order and to pro- 
duce evil and noxious things in nature. In 
the hells, and from the hells to some extent 
in the world of spirits, appear poisonous 
and hurtful animals, as serpents, scorpions, 
owls, mice, locusts, frogs, spiders, flies, lice and 
various parasites ; also malignant, virulent and 
poisonous herbs ; and also poisonous earths. 

These are mere correspondences of the cu- 
pidities which rush out of their evil loves and 
make themselves visible in such forms to 
others. The like things in nature flow in 
from the hells where there are things that 
correspond. Such things do not derive their 
origin from the Lord and have not been 
created from the beginning, and moreover 
have not been created from nature through its 
sun. Nature creates nothing; it only receives 
and clothes what is spiritual; and the Lord 
creates nothing evil, but man by the perver- 
sion and evil use of the Lord's creations. 
This takes place therefore in the natural mind 
of man, when the spiritual mind is closed, 
and his natural affections act against the 
Divine and pervert all good and truth into 
their opposites. The evils and falsities thus 
originated in and by man produce their cor- 



CORRESPONDENCE AND INFLUX. 95 



respondences in the world around hini ; and 
wherever there are excreinentitious, decay- 
ing and malarious atmospheres and matters, 
they flow in with nature and give rise to the 
destructive, noxious and poisonous animal, 
vegetable and mineral creations there These 
things correspond in general to the hells, and 
specifically to those there according to their 
specific quality. They are permitted for the 
same reason that evils themselves are per- 
mitted ; and this is for the sake of man that 
he may be in freedom; and being permitted 
and existing, they are over-ruled and ordered 
to be of use in controlling the evil. 

Since all poisonous atmospheres and mat- 
ters correspond to the hells there is an influx 
from evil spirits into them; and when 
they are introduced into the human body the 
corresponding spirits infest them, and operate 
through the mind in connection with the 
body to produce disorder and disease in the 
body. . 

It follows from all the facts which have 
been stated, which are all too meagre to give 
much idea of man's spiritual position and 
connections as Swedenborg saw it in the 
spiritual world, and in the opened Word, that 
correspondence and influx in every degree 



96 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

and sphere of life is manifold. It is general 
and particular; it is mediate and immediate. 
The body, for example, corresponds with the 
Grand Man and with the Lord, and it corre- 
sponds with the spirit within it. It receives 
an immediate influx of the divine life causing 
it to live and react upon the influx of its own 
mind, and upon all other general and par- 
ticular forms of spiritual influx. It receives 
a general influx through the human form of 
heaven conspiring to the integrity of its form 
and the health of its functions. At the same 
time it receives a mediate influx through 
the states of the mind, modifying its order 
and functions according to the affections and 
thoughts of the man's life. And this me- 
diate influx again is two-fold : general through 
the spiritual societies in which the man is, 
and particular through the particular spirits 
associated with him ; and both the general 
and the particular influx is two -fold, good 
and evil ; for man is connected by his guard- 
ian angels and associate spirits with heaven 
and hell, in general and particular. With 
all these forms of influx, nature co-operates, 
because in nature are ultimate correspond- 
ences of all things in man both orderly and 
disorderly. 



CORRESPONDENCE AND INFLUX. 97 



In regard to the main subject of this treat- 
ise; therefore, these conclusions follow: 

1. That all order and health flow in from 
heaven, and all disease and disorder from 
hell. 

2. That while all things conspire to keep 
man in order and health, the action of his 
own mind and his consequent spiritual associa- 
tions both general and particular, will, so far 
as he is in evil and falsity constantly operate 
to disturb that order and induce disease into 
the body. 

3. That since man is connected with the 
whole spiritual world, both heaven and hell ; 
by his spiritual and natural human form and 
its hereditary and actual modifications, his 
diseases are no certain index of his particular 
spiritual character. But so far as he is in 
the endeavour to live spiritually according 
to the laws of divine order he is in in- 
ternal correspondence with heaven, and all 
things conspire to the removal of disease so 
far as evils are removed. 

The laws of divine order are the laws of 
Divine Providence, which is to be conceived 
of in accordance with the one grand revela- 
tion in all the foregoing ; namely, thatthe Lord 
operates in human life, and through the spirit- 



98 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



ual world into nature, and not as an arbi- 
trary will outside of man and nature. The 
Divine Providence of the Lord is infinite and 
eternal ; it is general and particular ; it is in 
the good and the evil ; and it is, for both, the 
evolution of the best possible, by the divinely 
best means. It is the government of the 
Divine love and wisdom; and these cannot 
be separated, for the Divine love is infinitely 
wise and the Divine wisdom is infinitely 
good. In the Lord are infinite things of*love 
and wisdom and use; from Him they pro- 
ceed in their own nature and necessity with 
infinite endeavor to create receptive forms 
and fill them and relate them into one har- 
monious recipient and responsive image of 
the Lord. This is heaven ; and heaven is a 
Grand Man, into whom the Lord's infinite 
things may be received, and by whom the 
Lord's manhood may be reflected in reciprocal 
love, wisdom and uses. This composite man 
whom the Lord desires, can only be formed 
of individual free men; and its grand har- 
mony can only be constituted from their indef- 
inite varieties. The Lord, therefore, not only 
desires human minds to whom He may give 
the blessed things of his divine mind ; but 
since He has infinite things to give He desires 



CORRESPONDENCE AND INFLUX. 99 



various minds to receive and use them. 
Therefore He created, creates and will always 
be creating human minds, to be regenerated 
differently, to constitute distinct and diverse 
recipients and re-agents of the infinite things 
of his love and wisdoin, and all by their re- 
lations to love and wisdom bearing definite 
human relations to each other. Out of this 
variety heaven is perfected, and is ever ad- 
vancing into a more complete and gloriously 
perfect man. 

The subject of Divine Providence, there- 
fore, is man ; its end salvation, or heavenly 
health and happiness for man ; and its means 
are those by which man is perfected as to 
understanding and will, or the divine truth 
and order impressed upon the constitution of 
his two-fold nature and the two-fold universe 
in which he realizes his life. 

As creation and influx is by and in accord- 
ance with the correspondence of Natural 
things with spiritual, and of spiritual things 
with the Divine, so the revelation of divine 
truth is given by Correspondence. ' ' That there 
might be conjunction of heaven with man, 
the Word was written by pure Correspond- 
ences ; for all and each of the things which are 
there, correspond. And so, if a man were in 



100 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



the knowledge of Correspondences, lie would 
understand the Word as to its spiritual sense 
and it would be given him to know arcana, 
concerning which he sees nothing in the sense 
of the letter. For in the Word there is a 
literal sense, and there is a spiritual sense : 
the literal sense consists of such things as are 
in the world, but the spiritual sense of such 
things as are in heaven ; and because the con- 
junction of heaven with the world is by Cor- 
respondences, therefore such a Word was 
given, that every single thing in it, even to 
an iota, corresponds. 

" I have been instructed from heaven that 
the most ancient men on our earth, who were 
celestial men, thought from Correspondences 
themselves, and that the natural things of 
the world which were before their eyes, 
served them as means of so thinking; and 
because they were such, that they were con- 
sociated with angels and spoke with them ; 
and that thus by them heaven was conjoined 
to the world. From this, that time was 
called the golden age ; of which it is also said 
by ancient writers, that the inhabitants of 
heaven dwelt with men, and had intercourse 
with them as friends with friends. But after 
their times those succeeded who thought not 



CORRESPONDENCE AND INFLUX. 101 



from Correspondences themselves, but from 
the knowledge of Correspondences ; and there 
was conjunction of heaven with man also 
then, but not so intimate ; their time is what 
is called the silver age. Afterwards those 
succeeded, who indeed knew Correspondences, 
but did not think from the knowledge of 
them, because they were in natural good, and 
not as the former in spiritual good ; the time 
of these was called the copper age. After 
their times, man became successively exter- 
nal, and at length corporeal, and then the 
knowledge of Correspondences was altogether 
lost, and with it the conception of heaven 
and of most things which are of heaven."* 

Thus we learn that primeval men, in the 
infancy of the race, had no need of the ex- 
ternal verbal forms to guide them into the 
apprehension and perception of the truth. 
They were simple, open, sincere, aifec- 
tionate, and true. The Word which was 
with God, and was God flowed into them 
as the impulse of divine life, and thus 
as a living light. They were capable of 
holding communion with God by means of 
His love and wisdom "written on their 
hearts." They were capable thus of loving 

* Heayen and Hell n. 114. 



102 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

what He loved, and lived in open perception 
of His wisdom. Heaven and earth were 
united in man. The earth which the Word 
had made in the image of its powers and at- 
tributes, and the heaven which the Word 
had begotten in man by regeneration, were 
in correspondence and harmony, and the 
whole phenomenal world was a mirror of 
divine intelligence, wisdom, peace/ and love. 
They had no need of a written Word; its 
light shone within them, and its truths were 
reflected in every phenomena of the Word's 
creation. They saw the Logos in the Cos- 
mos. They needed no other instruction 
from without, no authority to coerce, no rea- 
sons to persuade ; for to what is good they 
had a "yea" implanted in the will, and to 
what is evil a "nay." Of course, creation 
was to them an open book of symbols, in 
which they read mental processes, spiritual 
principles, and divine ends, as we read ideas 
in words, with scarcely more thought of the 
things than we have of the words on the 
printed page, from which we seek only the 
meaning. Creation itself was the first 
Bible. There is such correspondence be- 
tween the visible and invisible worlds, 
that we all, in our lucid moments, seek to 



CORRESPONDENCE AND INFLUX. 103 

translate outward phenomena into spiritual 
principles and mental processes ; and this 
they perceived intuitively from the divine 
Spirit which then, in orderly influx, was 
communicated from the Lord without the 
need of a written Word. Thus the Word ? 
the wisdom of God and the light of man, 
spoke itself in their hearts and pictured it* 
self in the world. 

Then they fell away. Some, then others, 
and more and more, allowed themselves to 
delight in sensuous things for their own sake, 
instead of regarding them as the means of 
heavenly intelligence and use. Then they 
lost their interior perception of the truth. 
The transition was something like that from 
infancy to childhood, in which the senses as- 
sert themselves^ dependence gives place to 
self-assertion, intuition gives place to curious 
investigation. The transition was gradual, 
but it sped on. It involved more and more. 
They regarded their wisdom as their own, 
and felt themselves gods. They grew spir- 
itually stupid, and could not hear the voice 
of the Word within. 

How shall Grod now instruct men and 
make His wisdom known and carry over 
the life of his love into their souls? He is 



104 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

no further off; there is no break in His two- 
fold universe of which man is still an in- 
habitant. The Divine Man, the Lord, has 
now a heaven of angels, inmostly in each 
one of whom He dwells as in a little heaven 
and spiritual world. Into each angel he can 
flow with the fulness of His wisdom, and 
clothing it with a spiritual garment of an- 
gelic thought, descend into the ideas of 
speech of which nothing is lost. Thus the 
Lord as the Word, filling the person of an 
angel, may clothe and speak His wisdom in 
the language of human ideas ; and then open- 
ing the spiritual senses of a man in the 
world, dictate His Word to be spoken or re- 
corded in the language of the world. Thus 
is given the written Word through heaven, 
by means of prepared men, but as the 
work of God. 

THE WRITTEN WORD. 

The written Word is as Divine in its 
origin as are the things of nature. It is pro- 
duced in the same way through heaven from 
the Lord. And thus produced the eternal 
mind dwells in it and operates by it, as it in- 
fills and works in the universe it has made. 
There is the same distinction between in- 
spired Scripture and merely human com- 



THE WRITTEN WORD. 



105 



position as beween any living creation and 
its artificial imitation. There is the continual 
influx and presence of a Divine vital force 
into the language of the written "Word, an- 
alogous to the force of living things in na- 
ture ; the indwelling, sustaining and operat- 
ing presence of the eternal mind that creates 
it. And this is the meaning of that divine 
definition of revelation, "The words that I 
speak unto you they are spirit and they are 
life." Swedenborg says : 

" I have been informed how the Lord spoke 
with the prophets through whom the Word 
was given. He did not speak with them as 
with the ancients, by an influx into their in- 
teriors, but by spirits who were sent to them, 
whom the Lord filled with His presence and 
thus inspired words which they dictated to the 
prophets; so that it was not influx but dictation. 
And because the words came forth immed- 
iately from the Lord, they were each filled 
with the Divine, and contain within an in- 
ternal sense, which is such that the angels 
of heaven perceive them in a heavenly and 
spiritual sense, when men perceive them in 
a natural sense; thus the Lord has conjoined 
heaven and the world by the Word." 

In Revelation the Divine proceeding from 



106 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

God descends through the heavens even to 
man. Thus it descends through degrees ce- 
lestial, spiritual, and natural ; and when it has 
descended it contains these degrees in itself. 
The literal sense of holy Scripture is natural; 
its interior sense is spiritual; its inmost sense 
is celestial; and in each sense it is divine. 
These three senses of Holy Scripture make 
one by correspondence, like end, cause, and 
effect; therefore in the literal sense the 
Word is in its fulness, its holiness and its 
power. Every natural expression or image 
involves a corresponding internal sense. 
Thus it is a " ladder of light " with its foot 
on the earth and its top in heaven, upon 
which the angels of God ascend and descend, 
holding men and angels in open communion 
with the revealing Word who is over all 
and in all. 

" There is conjunction with the Lord by 
means of the Word, because He is the Word, 
that is, the veritable Divine Truth and Good 
therein. The conjunction is effected by the 
literal sense, because the Word in that sense 
is in its fullness, its holiness and its power. 
That conjunction is not apparent to man, but 
it exists in love of truth, and in the perception 
of it. There is consociation with the angels of 



THE WRITTEN WORD. 



107 



heaven by the literal sense, because within it 
there is a spiritual and a celestial sense ; and 
in these senses the angels are, — the angels of 
the Lord's spiritual kingdom m the spiritual 
sense of the Word, and those of his celestial 
kingdom in its celestial sense. Both these 
senses are evolved from the natural sense 
while the man who regards the Word as holy, 
is reading it. The evolution is instantaneous ; 
consequently the consociation is also.'" 

"That the spiritual angels are in the spir- 
itual sense of the Word, and the celestial 
angels in its celestial sense, has been mani 
fested to me by much experience. The per- 
ception has been given me that when I read 
the Word in its literal sense communication 
with the heavens was effected, sometimes 
with one heavenly society and sometimes 
with another : what I understood according 
to the natural sense, spiritual angels under- 
stood according to the spiritual sense, and 
celestial angels according to the celestial 
sense, and this instantly. As I have per- 
ceived this communication some thousands 
of times, there remains with me not the least 
doubt about it. . . I have thus been taught by 
living experience, that the Word in its lit- 
eral sense is the Divine medium of conjunc- 



108 THE SCIENCE OP CORRESPONDENCE. 



tion with the Lord and consociation with the 
angels of heaven." 

THE INCARNATE WORD. 

As the Word is always creating, producing 
new forms of use, and by perpetual influx 
into things made, sustaining and relating all 
things; so the Word is always revealing, 
giving new Scripture as it is needed, in con- 
tinual adaptation to changing and unfolding 
needs of man, and, by perpetual influx into 
the things written, "opening in all the Scrip- 
tures the things concerning Himself." And 
in the development of this eternal nature and 
necessary endeavor of the Word, to recreate 
from, sin, and save in life eternal, the " Word 
became flesh and dwelt among us, and we 
beheld His glory, the glory of the only 
begotten of the Father, (the glory of the 
Divine wisdom begotten of the Divine love,) 
full of grace and truth." 

The Lord Jesus Christ is Jehovah God in 
His Divine Humanity; the Word, taking on 
the human spirit and body which He had 
made, that He might bring the Divine truth 
into vital and redeeming contact with the 
life of man, and impart to him power to be 
saved through the truth. Christ was not a 
second person in the Godhead, not a man 



THE INCARNATE WORD. 



109 



like ourselves; but the Eternal Word who 
was with God and was God from the begin- 
ning, who made heaven and earth, inspired 
and kept them in being, who revealed Him- 
self from the ancient times as the Divine 
Man, who put on the human form of an angel 
that He might be seen before the spiritual 
sight of patriarchs and prophets, now taking 
the nature of man upon himself by actual 
conception and birth into the world, and 
glorifying it by the actual life of the eternal 
Mind in it and upon it, to be forever more to 
men the very objective revelation of God, to 
be the visible object of their faith and 
worship, and the medium of the eternal life 
which is light to the souls of all men. It 
was miracle; but the same old miracle by 
which the eternal mind produces and dwells 
in the universe, produces a written Eevela- 
tion and dwells in it, creates human minds 
and dwells with them, orders human history 
and testifies His eternal providence by it. It 
was only the indwelling mind of God, in its 
eternal purpose and meaning, coming out 
into realization and revelation. The humanity 
of Christ was conceived of the highest ; so is 
every spirit of man through the father of him. 
This Divine conception immediate and inde- 



110 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

pendent of a human father, is no infringement 
and reversal of order ; it is simply the old, 
eternal order, brought into relation to the de- 
veloping needs of men. The Power of the 
Highest immediately overshadowing the vir- 
gin, the holy thing born of her is in very 
fact the only begotten Son of God. Divine 
within and human without. The Divine 
within is the Father, the human is the Son; 
they are one person as soul and body are one 
man. Thus the Word brings Redemption. 
In taking our nature through the virgin, He 
assumes the burdens of our heredity, the 
iniquities of us all are made to meet in Him ; 
and our connection with Hell through our 
hereditary evils, He takes up into His own 
life. In His life on earth He brings the 
eternal Word in conquering conflict with the 
evils of the race ; He is tempted in all points 
yet without sin; and "in that He hath 
suffered being tempted, He is able to succor 
them that are tempted." The Divine Soul 
within Him acted by the human nature as 
the soul operates by the body; and as the 
soul conquers, regenerates and reconciles to 
itself the body, so God in Christ reconciles 
the world unto Himself, glorifies the human 
nature with the Divine, unites it to the 



THE INCARNATE WORD. Ill 

Divine, as the very Human form of God in 
whom " dwells all the fulness of the Godhead 
bodily." He is the Visible God ; in Him is 
the Invisible; and from Him is the Holy 
Spirit of life, light and regenerating power. 
This is why His Spirit has power to draw 
unto Himself and quicken with Divine life, 
even those who know Him not as God, 
but draw all their consciousness of the 
eternal goodness from its revelation in 
Him. 

Vindicating the Divine wisdom in the life 
of Jesus Christ, the spirit of His redemption 
combats and victories enters mightily into 
the written Word. He fulfilled it in Him- 
self ; and filled full its every word and com- 
mandment with the omnipotent virtue of 
His own Victory. In and by the Word, His 
Divine Human Spirit is mediated to every 
soul who will receive it as His Word, and 
keep it in faith in Him ; yea, this is why the 
Scriptures have power with men, and give 
power to a church, which has lost the dog. 
matic faith of their inspiration ; the Spirit of 
Christ, the Word, enters with them and 
quickens through them the mind that will 
yield itself to goodness, yea, and " of the re- 
bellious also," 



112 



THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



THE LAWS OF PROVIDENCE. 

In concluding this general statement of 
doctrine, a summary statement of some of 
the laws of Divine Providence is offered. 

1. It is a law of Divine Providence that 
man should be led and taught by the Lord 
from heaven, through the Word and doc- 
trine from it, and thus to all appearance as 
by himself. He is led by influx according 
to the correspondence of his affections and 
thoughts with societies in the spiritual world ; 
and he is taught by enlightenment accord- 
ing to his understanding of the Word and 
life in obedience to it. " The affections of 
man/ 1 we are taught, a from which his 
thoughts proceed, extend into the societies in 
the spiritual world in every direction, into 
more or fewer of them according to the ex- 
tent and quality of his affection. Within 
these societies is man as to his spirit, attached 
to them as it were, with extended cords cir- 
cumscribing the space in which he walks. 
As he proceeds from one affection to another, 
so he proceeds from one society to another, 
and the part of the society in which he is, is 
the centre from which issue his affections 
and thoughts to all the other societies as cir- 
cumferences. Through these societies the 



THE LAWS OF PROVIDENCE. 113 



man, that is, his mind, although bound, is 
led by the Lord ; nor does he take a step in- 
to which and from which he is not so led.'" 

" Thou hast beset me behind and before, 
and laid thine hand upon me.' 1 Yet in all 
this divine leading it is provided that man 
should not perceive but that he walks in per- 
fect liberty. " If his affection is evil he is 
taken round through the societies of hell, 
and if he does not look to the Lord he is 
brought more inwardly and deeply into them; 
but still the Lord leads him as it were by 
the hand, permitting and withdrawing him 
so far as he is willing from freedom to fol- 
low. On the other hand, if he looks to 
the Lord he is successively led through these 
societies, by an order and connection known 
only to the Lord, and is brought by con- 
tinuous degrees out of hell, upwards toward 
heaven, and into heaven. The Lord effects 
this without man's knowledge because if he 
knew of it he would disturb the continuity 
of that progress by leading himself. 1 ' It is 
done while man looks to the Lord, learns 
truths from the Word, shuns evils revealed, 
and wills good and truth into life as of him- 
self ; but in all this he is aided by the most 
wonderful secret ministry, bending and guid- 



114 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



ing his affections as if lie did it of himself. 

2. So far as man shuns evils according to 
the truths of faith received from the Word, 
the Lord enters with His redeeming and 
saving Spirit, removes evils and conjoins 
man with heaven and with Himself. 

If man believed, as is the truth, that all 
good and truth are from the Lord, and all 
evil and falsity from hell, he would not ap- 
propriate good to himself and claim merit, 
nor appropriate evil to himself and make 
himself guilty of it. He would only reflect 
upon the evils within him, and cast them 
back from himself to infernal spirits from 
whence they come, and this by shunning 
them as sins. 

3. The internal cannot be cleansed from 
the lusts of evil so long as evils in the ex- 
ternal man are not removed. 

4. The evils in the external man cannot 
be removed except by means of the man ; 
that is with his consent and effort as of him- 
self. 

5. Therefore evils are permitted that they 
may be seen, and that man may repent of 
and resist them. 

6. So far as man shuns evils in the ex- 
ternal thought and life, the Lord removes the 



THE LAWS OF PROVIDENCE. 115 



internal desire and also the evil from the 
life. 

7. Thus the Lord acts from His Divine in 
the inmost, and from His Divine truth in ex- 
ternal and outmost things of man's life, with 
man's consent and co-operation, to heal, order 
and regenerate all intermediate things. 

8. And since the Lord is order itself , all 
things from first to last are reformed and re- 
generated with respect to all other things for 
the sake of eternal life in heaven. 



«< THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN 
SCIENCE ' v EXAMINED. 

The purpose of this essay is expository 
not controversal. But, as said at the begin- 
ning, the name of Swedenborgis often connect- 
ed with metaphysical theories to which he 
gives no sort of countenance ; and his doc- 
trines are sometimes associated with foreign 
speculations in such a way as to mislead even 
those who are fairly well instructed in them. 

In Dr. Holcombe's " Condensed thoughts 
about Christian Science," this confusion exists 
throughout ; and the wide circulation of the 
pamphlet, the reputation of the writer and 
general impression that he is presenting the 
teachings of Swedenborg, whose name he 
freely uses, would seem to make an exami- 
nation of it in the light of the foregoing 
doctrine an act of justice, as well as a useful 
means of applying the doctrine to the subject 
discussed. 

The Doctor says in his preface : 

" The psychology of Swedenborg will solve many enigmas 
for the Christian Scientist, and save him from many errors 
and extravagances. » 

116 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 117 



*' It will teach him the difference between God and man f 
and between man and nature; and also the difference 
between the real and the apparent, and that between the 
apparent or unreal and the non-existent. 

14 It will teach him the correspondences between the Spirit 
and matter, and the true reason why we can say that 
matter has no properties, no sensations, no independent 
existence." 

This is true ; but lie had just said, u the 
idealism upon which Christian Science is based 
can be immensely re-inforced by the spiritual 
philosophy of Swedenborg," which is not in 
the least true, as that idealism is represented 
by the Doctor in his subsequent pages. 
There is a philosophic idealism deducible 
from Swedenborg's writings, but there is in 
it no confusion of the Divine Spirit with the 
spirit of man, nor any confounding of the 
degrees of life, nor any denial of the reality 
of the phenomenal world of the senses, such 
as obtains throughout these pages, and be- 
longs to the theories of Christian Science in 
general. And it will be seen that the very 
absence in Swedenborgof "the idealism upon 
which Christian Science is based," and the 
definiteness and reality of his distinctions 
between the Divine and the human, and 
between good and evil in the human mind 
and from the human mind in both worlds, is 
the only justification of the promise that his 



118 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



psychology will teach the scientist " the dif- 
ference between God and man, and between 
man and nature : also the difference between 
the real and the apparent, and between the 
apparent or unreal and the non-existent." 

The Doctor very properly begins with a 
"Statement of Being/' and holds that the idea 
of God is always the beginning, and that it is 
necessary to " return to first principles, the 
absolute truth about God, and from that truth 
as a divine centre, to re-construct and re -state 
all our knowledge." 

11 No system or science can ever be true unless it starts 
from God as a centre; and a false idea of God will vitiate 
the whole. There is one God: even Jesus Christ. He is 
manifested by Life, Love, Goodness, Wisdom and Power. * 
* * * There is no space, or time, state or condition, spiri- 
tual or natural, in the universe, where this life of God 
with its attributes, Love, Goodness and Wisdom does not 
exist. This diyine life, or essential being, expresses itself 
by Power, Order, Law, Intelligence, Use, Harmony, Beauty, 
Peace, Health and Happiness. The divine life is omnip- 
resent, omniscient and omnipotent; to which nothing can 
be added; from which nothing can be abstracted. It 
creates nothing opposite or contrary to itself. It creates 
everything in its own image and likeness. All things from 
the atom to the Man, reflect their Creator. * * These are 
absolute truths; true everywhere and always." — Page 10. 

This is true as far as it goes, though some- 
what vague in its terms, especially when 
taken in connection with a warning given in 
the preface, and with its elaboration in sub- 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 119 

sequent pages. " There is one God : even 
Jesus Christ," is the doctrine of the New- 
Church uniformly and consistently adhered 
to without modification or reservation by 
Swedenborg. He is Jehovah God in His 
Divine Humanity. He is not to be thought 
of as a Divine, all -pervading, invisible spirit 
of intelligence and power or other abstrac- 
tions ; but as the Divine Man, in whom is love 
and wisdom itself and from whom love 
and wisdom proceed ; first as the sun of 
heaven, and thence as spiritual heat and light 
which are received as love and wisdom in the 
created wills and understandings of angels 
and men. The Lord from Eternity, who 5s 
Man, descended and assumed a human 
organic form in all its degrees, by birth of a 
virgin; and this also he glorified in all its 
degrees by putting off what was finite and in- 
firm and putting on the Divine in the same de- 
gree, even to the corporeal or bodily degree 
which man leaves in the world, and rose with 
His whole body a Divine Substantial Human 
Form; from which is the Holy Spirit, which 
is the all of life, form, force and order in 
heaven and on earth. This is the doctrine 
of the New Church which Swedenborg ex- 
pounds, explains, definitely and with many 



120 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



warnings to think spiritually and not mater- 
ially, that is, from the Divine Human 
character and essence, and not from space and 
time, but without for a moment losing sight of 
the idea of a Man, and of the Human Form 
as the beginning and end of the thought of 
God. And the Lord Jesus Christ is He; 
there is no God out of Him ; or apart from 
Him ; His Glorified Humanity is the visible 
God in whom is the Invisible. It seems only 
a confounding and confusion of counsel, to a 
mind trained in this doctrine, to read the fol- 
lowing : 

"We must lose sight entirely of the historical person 
age — the Son of Man, and rise to the contemplation of the 
sublime fact, that Jesus Christ united to the Father is the 
divine humanity of the universe— the manifested Divine 
Truth — which includes all truths as the sea does its waves, 
which is no respector of persons or forms, and which can- 
not be limited to any ecclesiastical channel whatever. It 
is best, perhaps, to call him God— for he is God — and 
because He is God — He is also Jehovah and Buddha, and 
Allah, and the Great Spirit, and the Supreme Being, and 
every other name whereby man in his feebleness has strug- 
gled to express his perfections." — Page 5. 

If this means anything it is a confounding 
of the Humanity of God with the humanity 
of the universe, and of the Divine which 
proceeds from God- Man with the concepts 
to which it gives rise in the minds of men. 
With this vague conception of the " One 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 121 



God, even Jesus Christ/' one does not know 
how much truth may Be intended, or what 
idea it may yield the reader. The Doctor's 
"Statement of Being" may however be con- 
strued in agreement with the following from 
Swedenborg, the meaning of which cannot 
well be mistaken: "There is an only essence, 
an only substance and an only form, from 
which are all the essences, substances and 
forms that have been created. That one only 
essence, substance and form, is the Divine 
Love and Wisdom, from which are all things 
that have relation to love and wisdom. It is 
also Good itself and Truth itself, to which 
all things have relation. And those are the 
life from which are the life of all things and 
all things of life. Also that the Only, from 
which all else is, and the Itself, which alone is, 
is Omnipresent, Omniscient and Omnipotent. 
And this Only and Itself is the Lord from 
Eternity, or Jehovah." * In explanation of 
this last proposition, Swedenborg says, "God 
is One in essence and in person, and this God 
is the Lord ; the Divine Itself, which is called 
Jehovah the Father, is the Lord from eter- 
nity ; the Divine Human is the Son conceived 
from His Divine from eternity, and born in 

♦Divine Providence, n. 157. 



122 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



the world ; and that the proceeding Divine is 
the Holy Spirit." It is the Lord from eternity 
from whom are all essences, substances and 
forms, and it is the Divine proceeding or the 
Holy Spirit by which they are created, sus- 
tained, animated and actuated. 

This " Statement of Being," however, does 
not explain the existence of evil, sin, suffering 
and sorrow, or anything contrary to the Lord 
from whom all things proceed. The Doctor 
however assumes that it does, and proceeds 
to rule out such things. 

" Nothing of what we call evil, sin, suffering, sorrow and 
death can possibly have any source or causation in the 
divine life or any of its attributes, and there is no other 
origin for any real thing. They have, therefore no real 
independent existence. They are not negations of the 
Divine life, for that life is everywhere present and admits 
no negation. They are not perversions of the Divine life, 
for that life is infinitely perfect, and cannot be perverted. 
They are not living, real things at all, but false interpre- 
tations of the divine life, the creations of human fancy, 
the morbid products of the imagination — fantasies, shad- 
ows, dreams, nightmares, images, which seem to have life 
and power but have none. They produce on us all kinds of 
sensations as if they were real, but the sensations have no 
more real foundation than the sensations we experience in 
dreams." — Page 11. 

Because evil cannot originate in the only 
good and true, which are in the Lord and 
from the Lord, therefore he concludes they 
are not ; they are not negations, they are not 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 123 



perversions of the Divine life, therefore they 
are nothing. What is meant by the phrase 
"no real independent existence, 1 ' does not 
appear; independent of what? He has not 
yet shown how anything exists independent 
of the only life, not even man with an indi- 
viduality and consciousness of his own. If 
there is one only " life, love, goodness, wis- 
dom, power," how does it operate, how man- 
ifest itself, and to whom ? What receives it, 
and whence and how does that recipient ex- 
ist? Just here is the key to the psychology of 
the New Church, and to the confusion of 
Doctor Holcombe's "Thoughts. 1 " Swedenborg 
answers these questions in the Doctrine of the 
Divine Proceeding, and of created forms ; the 
Doctor does not answer them, nor does he 
keep Swedenborg' s answer clearly in mind, 
but more often the "idealism on which Chris- 
tian Science is based." 

Every man is a thought of God — a form of the Divine 
Truth, born of the Father or the Divine Love, and des- 
tined by appointed ways to work out and ultimate the 
divine purposes. This is the true doctrine of predestin- 
ation and of immortality, Truth is God thinking in us. 
Goodness is God feeling in us. All our movements 
from goodness and truth are God working through us. 
And yet we are not God — nor is this pantheism. It is 
the Christian's union with God. " That they all may be 
one : as thou, Father art in me and I in thee ;that they may 
also be one in us — I in them and thou in me"— Page 12. 



124 THE SCIENCE OP CORRESPONDENCE. 



A " thought of God " in God, is intel- 
ligible if He be conceived of as a Divine 
Man, a loving, thinking, acting person ; but 
a " thought of God" out of God is a pure 
abstraction unless there be a recipient form. 
u A form of the Divine truth, v — what Divine 
truth ? Divine truth in God, or proceeding 
out of Him ? How formed, in the Divine 
Mind, or by the operation of the Divine 
Mind upon what has proceeded forth from 
itself ? If the "thought of God" which man 
is, is God's thought in Himself, then every man 
is a part of God and all men are God ; and this 
is pantheism in spite of all denial. The 
Doctor must know, when he stops to con- 
sider, that Swedenborg's doctrine of the 
Divine Proceeding and the existence of at- 
mospheres and substances thence, and the 
creation of forms from those substances as 
the recipients of the Divine life, is the only 
conception which can avert the conclusion of 
pantheism ; and that this doctrine being un- 
known to his readers, his very definition of 
man could only serve to call up the Christian 
Scientists' circle of reasoning: man is a 
thought of God ; God is a spirit, therefore 
man is a spirit ; to be in the spirit is to be in 
God ; to think God's thoughts is to be God. 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 125 

Now let us turn to Swedenborg. Re- 
verting to the genera] doctrine, it will be re- 
membered, he teaches that the first proceed- 
ing from the Lord, who is the Itself and the 
Only, is the sun of the spiritual world, which 
is pure love from Jehovah God in the midst 
of it. It may be well here to state in sum- 
mary the order of creation from that sun. 
Let it be remembered that this is the order 
in which the " One only essence, substance 
and form," who is the Lord from eternity, 
" produces from Himself all the essences, 
substances and forms that have been created." 
They were not created out of nothing, bufc 
from His only essence, substance and form; 
they are not in Him, but produced forth from 
Himself by orderly derivations according to 
degrees, as already explained. 

1. God is Man; and from Him proceeded 
and proceeds the sun of the spiritual world, 
which is the first sphere of His Divine love 
and wisdom; spiritual fire and light eman- 
ating from Him, in the midst of which He 
is, and by which He creates and sustains all 
things. 

2. From the spiritual sun He produces 
spiritual atmospheres of several distinct de- 
grees. These atmospheres, at first most pure, 



126 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



fine, fiery and active, as they recede from that 
sun and become gradually coarser by con- 
cretion and compounding, and so cooler and 
less active; become at length substances at 
rest, capable of re-action and thus of becoming 
formed and actuated. Thus was the sub- 
stantial spiritual world produced; and by 
influx of the Lord's life of love and wisdom 
from that sun through those graded atmos- 
pheres it is continually sustained. All this 
in the spiritual world. 

3. From the Divine love and wisdom, or 
Divine heat and light of the spiritual sun, 
were cheated the natural suns, our sun and 
the fixed stars, which are the first created 
centers of natural worlds; and from each nat- 
ural sun, is produced natural atmospheres 
around it, first the finest, hottest, most active; 
then as they pass off into the distance from 
the sun, they become more compounded, 
cooler and less active, and finally substances 
at rest, thus water and then earths. 

Here, then, is a universe created by the 
Lord as a Man; a universe that is two-fold, 
spiritual and natural, the spiritual within the 
natural and connected with it, as the soul is 
within and connected with the body ; and it 
is continually sustained and conserved by 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 127 



Him, flowing in with His life from its first, 
highest and inmost beginnings through 
the spiritual world as a soul, into the nat- 
ural world as a body. In this two-fold uni- 
verse, internal and external, active and 
passive, the one is within the other, as the 
essential within the formal, the operative 
within the instrument. And the universe is 
two -fold because the spiritual sun is so ; 
and it is so because the Lord from whom it 
emanates is so ; that is, active love and re- 
active wisdom. 

There is humanity inhering in this uni- 
verse, therefore, from the essential humanity 
of the God -man who creates and sustains it; 
and every possibility of human form and use, 
and every spiritual and natural form and 
function corresponding to human life and 
need in this world and the other, were in- 
volved in the proceeding of creative life 
through the other world into this. That is, 
Divine life in its creative outflow to ult- 
mates in the world, involved in their initia- 
ment and held in potentiality all forms to be 
developed, when the basis and re-action should 
be reached in the earths. 

4. Given such a two -fold universe, with 
the spiritual world as its active soul and the 



128 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



natural world as its re-active body, and God 
in the inmost as the intelligent producer and 
mover of all ; then life flows in from God 
through the sun of the spiritual world in- 
to the natural sun, and by its atmospheres 
to the earths carrying the spiritual impulse 
and endeavor to form its substances into 
"rock-ribbed" foundations, and overlay them 
with mould and earths, and to form these 
substances into cells or eggs for the reception 
of vegetative seeds. In the spiritual world 
at the same time, are produced the active 
spiritual forms with an impulse to clothe 
themselves with material forms. Thus the 
first productions of the material world while 
it was still recent and in its virgin state, were 
seeds ; the first endeavor could be no other. 
There is, in the mineral kingdom, a constant 
tendency to vegetate ; that is, it receives from 
the common influx of the spiritual world 
through the sun's atmospheres an impulse 
and motion disposing its substances into re- 
cepticals, into which the vegetative soul or 
seed from the spiritual world may flow. To- 
wards this result, however, the heat and light 
and atmospheres of the natural world con- 
tribute nothing except to clothe the heat and 
light of the spiritual world, and supply the 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 129 



material to make it visible, useful and fixed 
in the natural world. Beginning thus, in the 
mineral kingdom, and in the simplest forms, 
and proceeding by successive modifications 
of forms and their vivification from the spir- 
itual world, existences came forth succes- 
sively through the three kingdoms of nature, 
each in effort to prepare for, and to supply 
forms to receive and bring forth the higher. 
But the only part that nature can play in the 
production of these ascending existences is to 
supply matter, and thus receptive forms, for 
the active spiritual seed and soul that flows 
in from the spiritual world. In the whole 
chain of existence not a mineral crystalizes, 
or a seed forms, or a plant grows or an 
animal is born, or a man lives and becomes 
regenerate, except by spiritual influx from the 
spiritual world adapted to produce that re- 
sult ; and such influx proceeds each and every 
moment, in every case, whether to produce 
or to sustain, by continual mediations from 
the love and wisdom of God. And when 
thus the kingdoms of nature were developed, 
and the corresponding kingdoms of the spir- 
itual world, the Lord operating through both 
worlds produced man as the end involved, 
and the crown and consummation in the 



130 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



whole divine chain of development* 

Swedenborg's definition of man ; as a 
substantial organic form recipient of the 
life of love and wisdom ought now to be in- 
telligible. He is "a thought of God," indeed ; 
but not a ''projection into nothing 1 ' as would 
be the case if he were not by created forms 
separated from the Creator in order that he 
may be a personal existence. As was shown 
in the general doctrine, "life must have an 
organism to operate a function; and the 
organism must be two -fold, spiritual to 
receive life, and, at first, material to give per- 
manence to spiritual forms, and react upon 
the inflowing life." It was shown that this 
necessity calls for two suns, a living and a 
dead, and two worlds ; and without birth into 
this world, spiritual organic forms, such as are 
the will and understanding of man, could not 
be given and developed. 

Now consider in this connection the follow- 
ing : "That the Lord has created man, and 
afterwards forms with him, a receptacle of 
love which is his will, and adjoins to it a 
receptacle of wisdom, which is his under- 
standing. That these forms, which are the 

•$ee Dr. Burnham in N. C. Messenger, Vol. 27, pp. 291, 303. 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 131 



receptacles of love and wisdom first exist 
with man at his conception and birth. That 
from those forms by a continuous principle 
are brought forth and produced all things of 
the body from the head even to the soles of 
the feet. That those productions are effected 
according to the laws of correspondence, and 
that therefore all things of the body, both 
internal and external are correspondences." 
<k That no angel or spirit is given nor can be 
given who had not been born a man in the 
world.*"* Moreover this spiritual organic 
form, which man is, is a series of forms in 
discrete degrees. There is an internal mind 
with its two receptacles, the will and under- 
standing ; an external mind, corresponding 
to the internal, with its will and understand- 
ing ; a spiritual body with its brains and its 
heart and lungs, corresponding to the will 
and understanding ; and a physical body cor- 
responding to the spiritual body and to the 
minds within it. 

This is somewhat more specific and think- 
able than the metaphysical abstraction sug- 
gested by the Doctor's phrase, "A thought of 
God." Swedenborg teaches everywhere, that 
"the will and the understanding is not any 

•Divine Wisdom in Apoc.Exp. IT. ^nd Yin. 



132 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



spiritual abstract principle, but a subject sub- 
stantiated and formed for the reception of 
love or wisdom." 44 Man's soul, which lives 
after death, is his spirit, and is in complete 
form a man ; the soul of this form is the will 
and understanding; and the soul of these is 
love and wisdom from the Lord; these two 
constitute man's life from the Lord alone, yet 
in order to man's acceptance of Him He 
causes life to appear as if it were man's 
own." * This appearance can be given, and 
thence rationality and freedom, because man 
as a created form has an inmost entrance and 
dwelling place of the Divine life, an internal 
will and understanding corresponding to the 
love and wisdom of the Lord, an external 
will and understanding corresponding to the 
internal, and a spiritual and natural body 
corresponding to the will and understanding. 

How real these organic receptacles are, may 
be conceived in that they are "substantiated 
and formed," and that the mental processes 
of which we are conscious are defined, not in 
the least as abstractions, but as mutations of 
actual spiritual substances and forms. "The 
changes of their state are affections, the var- 
iations of their form are thoughts, the existence 

♦Divine Love ana Wisdom, n. 394, 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAK SCIENCE. 133 



and permanence of the latter and the former is 
memory, and their reproduction is recollection; 
all taken together are the human mind."* 

All life is the Lord's and from Him alone ; 
but man is not the Lord, nor his affec- 
tion and thought the Lord's love and 
wisdom; because he is a created recep- 
tacle of them, and life as received by him on 
any plane of his faculties becomes what the 
form is. Life is brought down into and 
through the discrete degrees of his mind by- 
correspondence. Because the higher will 
and understanding correspond to Divine love 
and wisdom they receive it and bring it down 
as affection and thought to the lower will 
and understanding. The correspondence by 
organic form of the brain with the will and 
understanding brings these down as inhab- 
itants into the brain as their temporal 
home; the correspondence of the heart and 
lungs, by form again, with the will and un- 
derstanding, brings them into commerce of 
motion with the body; and the human spirit 
from within by correspondence with the cor- 
poreal human form makes the man a citizen 
of the natural world.f 

Any approach to a confounding of the 

•Divine Wisdom, Apoc. Exp. V. 

fSee Wilkinson's Greater Organs and Issues, etc., p 278. 



134 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

Divine life which is " All in all," with any 
or all things which it has created, such as 
may be traced on almost every page of the 
Doctor's pamphlet, may be set down as one 
of the "errors" not u repudiated " by him. 
God, spirit and matter are not to be con- 
founded : (a) God is life, substance and form 
in Himself; (£) spirit is created substance 
and form, receptive of life; and (c) matter is 
created substance and form, in itself dead 
and reactive to life. 

In like manner God, man and nature are 
distinct: (a) God alone is the creator of re- 
cipient forms and the giver of life ; (b) man 
is created a spiritual, substantial form, co- 
ordinate with the spiritual world, clothed 
upon with a dead, passive and re- active body 
co-ordinate with the material world; (c) life 
from God flows immediately into man's organic 
will and understanding, imparting and main- 
taining power to love and think and do, and 
also mediately through the spiritual world 
according to the quality of his love and 
thought and deed; thus (d) man lives by 
immediate influx from God but by mediate 
influx through associate angels and spirits, 
and by the reaction of the natural world, he 
lives in freedom and rationality. 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 135 



This action and re -action takes place in the 
natural or external mind, which is therefore 
the recipient of two opposite influences: 
heaven with its love and wisdom flowing in 
by the spiritual mind ; and the natural world 
with its conditions and appearances perceived 
in the plane of the senses. These two influ- 
ences acting and re -acting upon one another 
serve to keep man in a state of equilibrium, 
or of freedom of determination and action. 
So far as the natural mind re -acts upon the 
influx from the spiritual mind it is in a state 
of correspondence ; and is capable of develop- 
ment in the direction of the acting force, or 
the inflowing Divine love and wisdom. But 
so far as it re-acts against the spiritual mind 
the spiritual is closed and the natural mind 
develops in the direction of the acting force 
from below, or the affections and persuasions 
of the senses. The natural mind as a re- 
cipient form is thus capable of acting in cor- 
respondence with the spiritual mind, by which 
the one only life, love and wisdom flow in, 
or of acting in opposition to that influx ; in 
which case the recipient form is not destroyed 
but perverted into its opposite. In this 
equilibrium and consequent freedom of 
willing and thinking is at once the condition 



136 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

or angelic development and the possibility of 
evil creations. It is a balance which the 
Lord continually maintains and a freedom 
which He continually imparts ; because it is 
essential to individual and conscious manhood 
or angelhood; and in the right or wrong use 
of it are the issues of good and evil. 

Swedenborg teaches, that, "Man was cre- 
ated to love himself and the world, his neigh- 
bor and heaven, and also the Lord. Hence 
it is that when he is born he first loves 
himself and the world, then his neighbor 
and heaven, and afterwards in proportion 
as he grows in wisdom, the Lord ; when this 
is the case he is in reality led by the Lord 
though he is apparently guided by himself. 
In proportion, however, as he is unwise, he 
stops short in the first degree, which is that 
of loving himself and the world ; and if he 
loves his neighbor, it is for the sake of him- 
self in the eyes of the world. But if he is 
altogether void of wisdom, he then loves him- 
self alone, or the world and his neighbor for 
the sake of himself; and with respect to 
heaven and the Lord ; he thinks slightingly 
of them, or denies them, or even hates them 
in his heart, if he does not do so openly iu 
words. These are sources of self-love and the 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 137 

love of the world, and because these loves 
(out of subordination to the higher) are hell, 
the origin of hell is evident. When man has 
become a hell, the interior or higher princi- 
ples of his mind are closed, but the exterior 
and lower are open ; and because self-love 
directs everything of thought and will to it- 
self, immersing them in the body, it therefore 
inverts and forces back the exteriors of his 
mind, which, as was observed, are open, and 
the consequence is that they have an incli- 
nation and tendency downwards, and are 
borne away to hell. But because he retains, 
notwithstanding, the faculty of thinking, of 
willing, of speaking and of acting — a faculty 
which is in no case taken from him, because 
he is born a man — and is, at the same time, 
in this inverted state, receiving no longer any 
good or truth whatever from heaven, but 
rather what is evil and false from hell, he 
therefore procures for himself a kind of light, 
by confirmations of evil based in falsity, and 
of falsity based in evil, in order that he may 
still be eminent above others. He imagines 
that this is a rational light, though it is from 
hell, and in reality full of foolish delusion, 
producing a vision like that of a dream in the 



138 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



night, or a craziness of imagination, from 
which things that are appear as if they were 
not, and things that are not, as if they were."" * 
Here then is a rational account of man's 
life from the one only life, also of the free- 
dom whereby he perverts it into a real evil 
and continuing life of delusion and insanity. 
He has life from the only life, because he has 
been created and formed that he may be a re- 
ceptacle of it. He receives the Divine love into 
his will, and the Divine wisdom into his un- 
derstanding ; and this in such a way by the 
very constitution of these receptacles that the 
love and wisdom appear to be his own, and 
he to act as of himself as the Lord does act 
of Himself. Whence it follows that he de- 
termines the inflowing life in freedom of will 
according to his thought ; and that the re- 
cipient forms, or the will and understanding 
become conformed to the use he makes of the 
inflowing life. By virtue of the understand- 
ing he is an image oi God, and by virtue of 
the will a likeness of God ; and because these 
receptacles are from creation, and formed 
with every one in the womb, and are inde- 
structible, when they are closed above and 
opened below, man is still an image and like- 
ness but an inverted one, and his life a per- 

♦Athanasian Creed, n. 43. 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 139 

verted one. He is still a recipient of Divine 
life; it flows in by the unconscious inmost 
soul, and the closed internal mind. But 
when it reaches his conscious will it is turned 
into its opposite corresponding love and in 
his understanding perverts every known 
truth into a corresponding falsity. Of such 
is hell. These evils and falsities pressing into 
nature originate every evil form, disorderly 
force, and injurious combination known to 
nature. Evil, therefore, in man and in the 
spiritual world and in nature, is not the 
"negation of the one only life," but the per- 
version of created recipient forms into corre- 
sponding opposites. 

The Doctor says " there are two factors in 
the production of phenomena — God's will 
and man's will"; and proceeds to explain as 
follows : 

" When we desire a selfhood and to possess things with a 
supreme ownership, we try to separate ourselves from God 
and lead an independent life. But we cannot do it. We pro- 
duce merely a vast tissue of self -deceptions. The first step in 
this self-deception of the race is the creation of the devil — the 
father of lies — who abides not in the truth. In this effort after 
a sense of independence and ownership, we externalize our 
thoughts and so pervert our affections and falsify our under- 
standings ; and thus weave a fantastic, unreal thread into our 
whole web of being. We are then cast out of the spiritual 
garden of Eden, and generate by our own thinking a change in 
our material environment, to which we give false interpre- 
tations innumerable." — Page 13. 



140 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



Now it will be seen from the foregoing 
exposition of the doctrine of recipient f orms ; 
that this is an inadequate account of both the 
process and the effect of man's desire to " lead 
an independent life." It is the more mis- 
leading because it is partially true so far as 
it goes, but is neither wholly true nor the 
whole truth. What that desire did in the 
origin of evil was to close the will and under, 
standing above and open them below] and 
since affections and thoughts are changes in 
the state and form of the spiritual substances 
of the mind, this was an inversion and per- 
version of the receptacles " substantiated and 
formed" with man. The result, which the 
Doctor calls " a vast tissue of self-deceptions," 
was indeed wrought into the spiritual tissue 
of the mind itself; wherefore it became or- 
ganic, and transmissible as a perverted organ- 
ism by the laws of heredity. It did not in 
deed "produce a new life different from 
God's life," for man can produce no life, good 
or evil; but it did produce something more 
than "a dream," an inversion in the sub- 
stantial organism of the mind, a perversion of 
functions, turning of the good of life into its 
opposites, and thus an inflowing good into a 
real and continuing evil. Any jugglery with 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 141 



the words "real" and "unreal" is folly here. 
Since man is nothing but a recipient form, a 
perversion of the form is organized and sub- 
stantiated ; and it is a real perversion in every 
customary sense of the word, that is a sub- 
stantial and organic fact however disorderly; 
and because he is still a recipient form, 
though perverted and disordered, the life re- 
ceived and qualified by that form, is a real 
life though insane and evil. And moreover 
this evil condition existing is not to be es- 
caped by any denial of it, but by " re -form- 
ation;" that is by actually living the recep- 
tacles of the will and understanding back into 
their true form and order by obedience to the 
truth of God, or the Word brought down to 
man's apprehension. Evil is so real that 
there is no escape from it, except by real re- 
generation, by " shunning evil as sin against 
God," and "combatting it as from hell" which 
is the inversion and opposite of heaven. 
There is an unreality and phantasy pertain- 
ing to every perverted will and understand- 
ing; but the perversion of the receptacles, 
which is the origin and determining cause of 
these insanities, is most real. "A real thing," 
says the Doctor, " has a definite projection or 
objectivity, dependent upon some underlying 



142 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



cause, in harmony with the Divine laws of 
creation and manifestation. 1 ' Precisely that 
evil and disease are; and their existence, 
manifestation, control, subordination and re- 
moval, are dependent upon the " divine laws 
of permission which are also laws of divine 
Providence." 

The fifth u Error " to be repudiated, upon 
the repudiation of which the whole scheme of 
Christian Science rests, is not an error ac- 
cording to Swedenborg. The Doctor states 
it thus : 

5th Error. — That evil, sin, suffering and sickness are real 
things, genuine entities and existences, involving the whole 
world in mental and physical conditions of disorder and 
wretchedness; and to be resisted and combatted by all the 
means, internal and external, which we can command, and 
not to be destroyed, as Christ demonstrated, by the word of 
truth."— Page SO. 

The only way in which Christ " destroyed" 
evil, sin, suffering, and sickness by the u Word 
of truth " was through man's co-operation, in 
the acknowledgment of them and in re- 
pentance and faith by obedience. Such is 
the teaching of Swedenborg throughout. 
He says: 

" He who would be saved must confess his 
sins, and do the work of repentance. To con- 
fess sins, is to know evils, to see them in our- 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 143 

selves, to acknowledge them, to make our- 
selves guilty, and to condemn ourselves on 
account of them. This, when it is done be- 
fore God, is the confession of sins. 

" To do the work of repentance, is to desist 
from sins after a man has thus confessed them, 
and from an humble heart has made suppli- 
cation for remission, and to live a new life ac- 
cording to the precepts of charity and faith. 
He who only acknowledges generally that he 
is a sinner, and makes himself guilty of all 
evils, and yet does not explore himself, that 
is, see his own evils, makes confession indeed, 
but not the confession of repentance ; he, for- 
asmuch as he does not know his own evils, 
lives afterwards as he did before. He who 
lives the life of charity and faith does the 
work of repentance daily ; he reflects upon 
the evils which are with him, he acknowl- 
edges them, he guards against them, he sup- 
plicates the Lord for help. For man of 
himself continually lapses towards evil, but 
he is continually raised by the Lord, and led 
to good. Such is the state of those who are 
in good ; but they who are in evil lapse con- 
tinually, and are also continually elevated by 
the Lord, but are only withdrawn from falling 
into the most grievous evils, to which of 



144 



THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



themselves they tend with all their power. 
The man who explores himself in order to do 
the work of repentance, must explore his 
thoughts and the intentions of his will, and 
must there examine what he would do if it 
were permitted him, that is, if he were not 
afraid of the laws, and of the loss of repu- 
tation, honor and gain. There the evils of 
man reside, and the evils which he does in 
the body are all from thence."* 

Moreover he teaches that " no one can 
shun evils as sins, so as inwardly to hold 
them in aversion, except by combats against 
them." 

We come most completely under the 
sphere of evil spirits when we deny their ex- 
sitence, for they can then flow into and ex- 
cite our disorderly mental forms in such way 
as to make evil seem good. The enjoyments 
of hereditary evils allure the thoughts and 
banish reflection , wherefore, if man did not 
know from some other source that they are 
evils he would call them goods, and from 
freedom according to the reason of his 
thought he would commit them ; when he 
does this he appropriates them to himself. 
To deny the reality of evils in the thought 

• Heavenly Doctrine Nos. 159-164. 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 145 



without acknowledging their source in hell 
and from evil spirits, is not to shun or re- 
move them, but to close the eye of the mind 
to them while cherishing the unacknowl- 
edged inward love from which they flow 
forth. But to acknowledge evils and falsities 
in one's self as flowing in from hell and 
through the agency of evil spirits, to repu- 
diate them as contrary to the Word, to re- 
ject them to hell from which they proceed, 
to refuse them volition and act because they 
are wrong, and combat them as of one's self 
in the name of the Lord, — this is to remove 
evils in the external man and open the door 
for the Lord to come in and remove the lusts 
of evil in the internal, and dispose the evil 
spirits and their inciting sphere. This is to 
deny, not the reality of evil, but the reality 
of its pleaded rights and powers. And this 
denial takes place in the thought, from the 
will to shun evil and live according to the 
Lord's Word. Evil spirits rejoice and exult 
when they can induce man to deny the devil 
and the reality of evil, for then they can 
work where they love to work, in the dark ; 
and flowing from the dark into man's heredi- 
tary love, lead him where they will. But 
if man, when any evil is presented in 



146 THE SCIENCE OP CORRESPONDENCE, 



thought, will say, "I see this and know that it 
flows in from evil spirits into the inclinations 
of my self-love, but because it is contrary to 
the Lord's Word I will not do it," then the 
evil spirits are compelled to withdraw ; the 
truth adopted as a principle of action is appro- 
priated ; the will of good is internally strength- 
ened; and an advance in spiritual life is 
achieved. 

This is in brief the doctrine of life for the 
New Jerusalem. And it is based upon the 
doctrine of Redemption, which is, that the 
Lord took our nature upon Him, with its 
hereditary evil, or disordered recipient forms, 
that in it His love and wisdom might be as- 
saulted by evil spirits, and by combats against 
them subjugate them to the Divine Truth and 
keep them in subjection to eternity. He did 
more than take on "all the functions of our 
externalized human nature," more than to 
" enter upon our false and terrible dream," 
whatever the Doctor may mean by these 
vague expressions. He actually took our 
nature, all of it, with its hereditary pervert- 
ed forms, so far as they could be assumed 
through the mother without a human father ; 
" He was tempted in all points in which we 
are; yet without sin," for He did not "enter 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 147 

upon our false and terrible dream," but drove 
back the assaulting spirits by the assertion of 
the Divine Truth against them and the oper- 
ation of its power upon them ; thus suffering 
their assaults without accepting their evils 
and fantasies, and reducing them to the lim- 
itations of order in hell; and thus, without 
denying their reality, destroying their power 
over man. 

At the same time, and by the same com- 
bats with evil spirits and victories over them, 
he " put off every thing derived from the 
mother," and put on the Divine Human even 
to ultimates, making His very body Divine 
Good and Truth, the very form of the Invis- 
ible God and "the power of God unto salva- 
tion," to all who will approach Him immedi- 
ately and assert the commandments of His 
Word against evil in His name. His re- 
deeming work was not, and is not any imag- 
inary and idealistic dispersion of " race-errors 
and race -illusions," but an actual conflict 
with evil spirits who were and are the em- 
bodiment of those errors and illusions, and 
the victorious assertion of His Divine truth 
against them, whereby they were reduced to 
order within the limitations which the Lord 
in mercy and wisdom allows them in hell. 



148 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



"The Divine Nature is not susceptible of 
evil; wherefore, that He might overcome 
evil by His own proper strength, which no 
man could or ever can do, and that thus He 
might become Justice, He willed to be born as 
another man. Otherwise there was no need 
that He should be born ; for He might have 
assumed the human essence without birth, 
as formerly He had occasionally done when 
He appeared to the Most Ancient Church, and 
likewise to the Prophets." This was by 
filling an angel with His Divine, or taking 
on His own in the angel, and thus the angelic 
form, in which He could manifest Himself 
and through which He could speak. But 
redemption involved a combat with evil 
and necessitated the assumption of the or- 
ganic human forms of the external man in 
which it inhered. Therefore, " in order that 
He might put on evil, to fight against it and 
to conquer it and that He might thus at the 
same time join together in Himself the 
Divine essence and the human essence, He 
came into the world." * " The battle of the 
Omnipotent God was with the hells, upon 
which battle He could not have entered un- 
less He had before put on the human. But 

•Arcana Coelestia, n. 1573. 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 149 

it must be known that the battle of the Lord 
with the hells was not an oral battle as be- 
tween reasoners and wranglers : such a battle 
effects nothing at all there. But it was a 
spiritual battle, which is of Divine truth 
from Divine good, which was the very vital 
principle of the Lord ; the influx of this 
though the medium of sight, no one in hell 
can resist. There is in it such power that 
the infernal genii flee away at the mere per- 
ception of it, cast themselves down into the 
deep, and creep into caverns that they may 
hide themselves.' 1 * Because there was no 
longer an ultimate love of the Divine good 
and truth of the Word with men; that is a 
love and will of obedience to its command- 
ments such as to serve as a medium of Divine 
enlightenment and power, the Lord himself 
took on the natural human, lived the "Word 
into it, made it the Divine truth in ultimates, 
and the medium of Divine power to men. 

What the Lord did by the power of the 
Divine truth in His human, He continues to 
do through the Word, and gives man by the 
power of the Word to do in His name, — 
drive evil spirits back to hell, reject evils 
from himself, both hereditary and acquired, to 

* True Christian Religion, n. 124. 



150 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



those who have confirmed themselves in the 
appropriation of them. The rejection of 
evils by a denial of them in the thought, is no 
rejection nor removal of them ; but the ac- 
knowledgment that they are from hell and 
the repudiation of them as belonging to evil 
spirits, is both a rejection and removal of 
them, for then the Lord's redeeming power 
operates by the Word to remove the evil 
spirits and thus the source and inspiration of 
the evils. This is Christianity; and known 
and embraced in the will, and practiced in 
the day's life, faithfully to the end, it is a 
Christian Science indeed, omnipotent for 
eternal life, and for the organic removal of 
disorder by successive processes of actual life, 
and the promotion of health in natural life 
also. The formula of its practice is laid 
down by Swedenborg as follows in the 
Doctrine of Life : 

I. All religion has relation to the life, and 

the life of religion is to do good. 
II. No one can do good, which is good, 

from himself. 
III. So far as a man shuns evils as sins he 

does good, not from himself, but from 

the Lord. 

1. If a man wills and does good before he 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 151 

shuns evils as sins, the good that he 
wills and does is not good. 

2. If a man thinks pious thoughts and 

speaks pious words, and does not shun 
evils as sins, the pious things which he 
thinks and speaks are not pious. 

3. If a man knows, and is wise in many 

things, and does not shun evils as sins, 

yet he is not wise. 
IV. So far as any one shuns evils as sins, 

he loves truths. 
V. So far as any one shuns evils as sins he 

has faith, and is spiritual. 
VI. The decalogue teaches what evils are 

sins. 

VII. Murders, adulteries, thefts, and false 

witness, of every kind, with the lust 
after them, are evils which are to be 
shunned as sins. 

VIII. So far as any one shuns murders, of 

every kind, as sins, he has love to- 
wards the neighbor. 

IX. So far as any one shuns adulteries of 
every kind as sins, he loves chastity. 
X- So far as any one shuns thefts of every 
kind as sins, he loves sincerity. 

XI. So far as any one shuns false witness 
of every kind as sin, he loves truth. 



152 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



XII. No one can shun evils as sins, so as in- 
wardly to hold them in aversion, ex- 
cept by combats against them. 

XIII. Man ought to shun evils as sins, and 

fight against them, as from himself. 

XIV. If a man shuns evils for any other rea- 

son than because they are sins, he 
does not shun them, but only prevents 
their appearing before the eyes of the 
world. 

It seems unnecessary to enter further into 
the Doctor's affirmations and denials. When 
he proceeds to speak of "Disease and Its 
Cure," he speaks much more in harmony with 
the teachings of Swedenborg than with the 
idealism of his preceding pages. He says 
the cause and cure of disease are always spir- 
itual, and operate by Correspondence. 

"The cause and cure of disease are always mental. The 
apparent external causes of disease are emblems or correspond- 
ences of the real interior and spiritual causes. When the 
external is applied, it is really the internal which acts. Ipecac 
does not produce vomiting because men think it does, or be- 
cause it has any vital property whatever, but because it corre- 
sponds to the sphere of disgust, loathing and rejection, which 
is spiritual vomiting." — Page 38.. 

He might have said that the "sphere of 
disgust, loathing and rejection " is its vital 
property by Correspondence. As was shown 
in the general doctrine, all poisonous things 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 153 



in nature are produced from corresponding 
principles in the hells. When ipecac, there- 
fore, is introduced into the human system, the 
evil spirits who are in that principle to which 
it corresponds, communicate their sphere to 
mind in connection with the body and oper- 
ate upon both mind and body. 

"An evil sphere is a concrete atmosphere of falsities, as 
real as our terrestrial atmosphere, emanating from souls or 
spirits who are in evil conditions. A similar sphere emanates 
from every one of us, so far as we are in evil, and the whole 
race would be simultaneously plunged into sickness, insanity 
and death, if angels and good spirits were not adjoined to us, 
whose spheres of goodness and truth counteract the evil 
spheres, and hold us in the equilibrium of health and ration- 
ality."— Page 40. 

The Doctor might have added that the 
angels and good spirits, inflowing into corre- 
sponding things in nature, operate by what 
we call natural laws, atmospheres, substances 
and forces external to the body, to keep in- 
tact this equilibrium of health, and to restore 
it when disturbed. The efficient causes are 
all spiritual, both for good and evil; but 
they operate both directly and indirectly, 
upon the mind and through corresponding 
things in nature ; and thus through the mind 
into the body, and into nature and by reac- 
tion upon the body. As heaven conspires 
through the angels attendant upon man to 



154 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



keep the will in equilibrium, so all heaven 
conspires in and through its corresponding 
ultimates in nature to keep the body in equi- 
librium and health. 

"Disease is a disturbance of that equilibrium, and all its 
phenomena are strictly representative of spiritual states and 
their variations. Germs, microbes, bacteria, etc. , are always 
in the first place the products or effects of disease, the repre- 
sentative forms of the evil spheres. Being once produced, 
they may become carriers of the sphere and evoke it again 
into action in those persons in whom it is latent. Where the 
spheres are not latent, the earners will be absolutely innocu- 
ous." — Page 40. 

The truth here is, that all disease-produc- 
ing conditions originate in the spiritual 
world. Their cause is in hell ; their active 
centres are evil spirits and societies; their 
corresponding forms in nature have no power 
to produce disease, only they are planes of 
influx for the producing spirits. When 
these natural correspondents of evils are in- 
troduced into the body, evil spirits infest 
these substances and operate upon the body 
to disorder its functions; and at the same 
time they communicate their sphere to the 
mind, and exciting its corresponding evil 
forms, whether hereditary or acquired, occa- 
sion mental disorders which again carry 
themselves down into the corresponding 
bodily organs and their functions. This is 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 155 



what the Doctor means, or should mean, in 
the saying that where the evil "spheres are 
not latent the carriers will be absolutely in- 
nocuous." The u evil spheres " can enter 
into perverted and disordered mental forms; 
and these by heredity belong to all, until 
they are by real regeneration corrected and 
re-formed. Of course those who are in ac- 
tual sin are more susceptible to the sphere 
of evil spirts, and consequently to the dis- 
eases they induce through infectious germs 
and such like, which the Doctor happily 
calls " carriers of their sphere." But not al- 
ways the evil suffer most from such causes, 
for they by their evil selfhood may for the 
time be more alert and observant of those 
ultimate laws of bodily order, which are the 
correspondents of heavenly order, and thus 
receive into their natural life that "common 
influx" which preserves their external in 
health and beauty. The main point here, 
however, is that diseases are in all cases 
caused by the operation of evil spirits, and 
that their operation is in and by means of 
spiritual conditions either of the mind's life 
or induced upon it. As Dr. Wilkinson says : 
" Wherever a swamp and putridity of circum- 
stance lies, they are congenially attracted, and 



156 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



godly and godless folks are smitten if they 
dwell upon that region." 

This is an answer, also, to the question, 
"Why are good people sick?" Dr. Hol- 
combe says "the evil elements in so-called 
good people are only suppressed, not eradi- 
cated, and are ready to burst into activity as 
soon as the conditions are supplied ; " and he 
names as one of the conditions, "false think- 
ing." It is true even that with regenerating 
people, who look to the Lord alone and seek 
to shun evils as sins in their daily life, the 
great mass of their hereditary evils with 
their fears, lusts and cravings, hide behind 
their ignorances and fallacies and can only 
be dislodged by the truth, seen and asserted 
in the Lord's name. Few have the requisite 
knowledge of truth concerning themselves, 
and their relations to the Lord, and to the 
hells, and few could stand the test of fidelity 
to the naked truth upon these subjects, which 
could alone uncover and subdue the varieties 
of hereditary evil which lurk under our com- 
mon notions and practices. Latent there, or 
in unjudged activity, each lust and craving 
"married to its own proper stupidity and im- 
prudence, and embodied in life -long habits," 
these constitute a body of weakness, ignor- 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 157 



ance and disorder, into which the infernal 
spirits operate to "take away man's vital 
happiness, make his sleep sordid, and enter- 
ing by intimate correspondence into his or- 
gans, debase their lives, and make their func- 
tions vicious and disorderly." 

This is also an explanation of the effects 
of our anxieties, f ears, and unbelieving nutter 
and fuss over unresisting and impressionable 
children. We surround them with a sphere 
of distrust and foreboding that invites and 
attracts the evil spirits who love to iuduce 
what we anticipate, and are thus able to pos- 
sess their mortal brains and bodies. We 
therefore take them out of the care of their 
angelic guardians, and immerse them in evil 
spheres. This explains also why a calm, con- 
fident, trustful ministry from physician or 
nurse will restore the spiritual eqnilibrium, 
with manifest effects in the condition of the 
body and the equilibrium of its functions. 
It explains also the Doctor's assertion which 
presumably all will admit. 

" Imagination, hope, expectations, magnetism, faith, 
mind, spontaneous recovery, have always been the most 
potent factors in every cure made by the medical profession, 
no matter what was the school or the theory of cure. The 
doctor's highest power is personal, social, magnetic, spirit- 
ual, not medicinal." 



158 



THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



In turning now to examine some of Dr. 
Holcoinbe's suggestions in regard to the 
cure of disease, and to turn the light of the 
doctrine of Correspondence upon the whole 
problem, two quotations are offered as em- 
bodying such plain good sense, as to consti- 
tute a canon of criticism. The first is from 
an able article on " Psychopathy " by R. N. 
Foster, M. D. 

" In all departments of organized being, conscious or 
unconscious alike, there is operative a constant connatus 
toward a harmonious state of being, a connatus, which in- 
cessantly and spontaneously, or voluntarily and intellectu- 
ally, as the case may require, acts to supply all want, to 
ward off all danger and to repair all injuries."— Mind in 
Nature, Vol. 1, p 50. 

This endeavor and effort in nature and in 
spirit is the influx and operation of the Di- 
vine love and wisdom in and according to the 
correspondence of all things with the Lord, 
and their harmony with each other ; conspiring 
to universal order, and restraining and gov- 
erning all disorder by corresponding oppo- 
sites. The second quotation is in distinct 
acknowledgment of this Divine source and 
spiritual cause of all health and healing by 
the means of both mental and physical, and 
of both ordinary and unusual conditions. It 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 159 



is from the pen of the Rev. John Worcester, 
in the New Jerusalem Magazine for 1883, 
in ah article full of valuable suggestions on 
"the use of poisonous drugs," and reads as 
follows : 

"All healing power is from the Lord, just 
as much now as when He was visibly present, 
and just as much when medicines are used, 
as when He employed only the simple means 
of His touch. In a sense all healing is 
miraculous, because it is from the influence 
of the spiritual world into the natural, in the 
sense in which Swedenborg says : 'The 
things which appear in the three kingdoms 
of nature are produced by an influx from 
the spiritual into the natural world, and, 
considered in themselves are miracles, 
although on account of their familiar aspect 
and their annual recurrence, they do not 
appear as such.' Cures appear more mir- 
aculous when they depend merely upon 
changes of mental state, than when a medi- 
cine also is employed. But in reality one 
is just as miraculous as the other. The 
healing life in both cases is the Lord's life ; 
and in both it is increased and preserved by 
the acknowledgment that it is HisP (1883, 
p. 155.) 



160 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



Keeping these two truths in mind, it. is 
not only easy to see why, as the Doctor ad- 
mits, all systems of cure " have done service 
to humanity," and that " they will continue 
to do so until the Lord comes," but also that 
He comes in and by means of them accord- 
ing to the laws of Divine order, which turn 
even evils to use and over-rule all disorder 
for good. 

" Man as he lies stretched upon his pallet, 
is still both a soul and a body and he is 
subject to the influence of spiritual forces 
operating by correspondence into the dis- 
tinct planes of the soul and of the body, to 
restore the equilibrium of the one and of the 
other, and of one to the other. The fact that 
diseases are spiritual in their origin, and that 
the efficient cause of cure is in the spiritual 
world, "is no hindrance to a man's being 
healed naturally, for the Divine Providence 
concurs with such means of healing/'* In 
the process of repairing injury or maintain- 
ing the status of health, the means em- 
ployed are varied according to the nature of 
the injury or the special demand of the con- 
dition given ; and with these means spiritual 
forces concur in such wise as to adapt them- 

Arcana Coelestia. n. 5713. 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 161 



selves to the varying correspondence. " The 
brutes,' 1 says Dr. Wilkinson, " know better 
than to resign themselves to doing nothing 
under natural afflictions ; they lick their 
sores, and seek their herbs ; and the domes- 
tic animals bring their sorrows of this kind 
to man, and assume a kind of patience under 
the treatment he enjoins. We therefore 
reckon that any medical practice which has 
had a few precedents to correct it, is better 
than that profession of nothing, to which 
some of our brethren have directed their 
hopes. It is equally true that many cases 
would have recovered better by simply 
watching, and the application of a few ob- 
vious means mostly suggested by the patient's 
feelings, than where a large apparatus of 
drugs has been employed." Nevertheless, 
drugs, as well as the simpler alleviating 
means, have their use ; and one of the uses 
assigned to them by Swedenborg is, "that 
they conduce to absorbing malignities, thus 
also to cures" * This is the key to the theory 
of cure which probably led the Doctor to. 
write the following: 

" Drugs act as representatives of spiritual ideas, curing 
by laws entirely unknown to the physician, while he is con- 
gratulating himself that he is bringing about a cure accord- 

* Divine Love and Wisdom, n. 33G. 



162 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



ing to his own hypotheses, which are generally the merest 
blunders in naturalism." 

" The allopathic practice casts out devils or evils, by 
Beelzebub, the prince of devils. ' Resist the devil and he 
will flee from you.' The homeopathic practice — ■ like to 
like' — is the true emblem-cure— the cure by correspond- 
ences—' Resist not evil.' Whoever understands this script- 
ure paradox can see how both Allopathy and Homeopathy 
have their uses." — Page 38. 

A paradox indeed the above must appear 
standing as it does unexplained ; and it may- 
be doubted whether there is not a fallacy 
lurking in this form of statement. But to 
those who have grasped the general doctrine 
of Correspondence the fundamental idea may 
be easily explained, and will throw some light 
upon the fact that Divine Providence does 
concur with both Allopathic and Homeopa- 
thic treatment, while yet all efficient causes 
of disease and cure are wholly spiritual. 

Recall these truths : that all things in the 
three kingdoms of nature which are poison- 
ous and hurtful to man are produced from 
hell ; that like things are in the hells and 
flow forth by correspondence from the 
evils of those there ; that evil spirits have 
thus by correspondence not only conjunction 
with such things in nature, but that their 
evils animate them and give to them their 
essential properties. Recall further, that all 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 163 



disease is produced by influx from the hells, 
either through man's active evils into his 
body, or into conditions therein existing 
from hereditary or imparted disorder; that 
certain drugs introduced into the human sys- 
tem do produce morbid states similar in 
theii symptoms with those of disease, be- 
cause evil spirits corresponding to^them have 
in them a plane of influx through which 
they can operate. 

Then it follows, that given any state of 
disease which is a correspondent and plane 
of influx for certain evil spirits, the introduc- 
tion of a drug which carries with it opposite 
symptoms furnishes a plane of influx for 
spirits of an opposite nature ; and in their 
conflict and opposition, equilibrium is re- 
stored. This is what the Doctor calls cast- 
ing out evils by Beelzebub ; and is described 
by Swedenborg as a common phenomenon of 
the hells, and a fundamental principle of 
government there. 

If, on the other hand, in any given set of 
symptoms a drug be introduced which carries 
with it similar symptoms, it furnishes in the 
bodily organism a lower plane of influx for 
like spirits ; and by the law of the life of 
the evil that they are congenially attracted 



164 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



and gravitate into their lowest corresponding 
ultimate, the drug " absorbs their maligni- 
ties," and the system gathering up its forces 
by the law of resistance to disturbance re- 
jects both drug and infestors. The Doctor 
might, however, have found a more pointed 
Scriptural illustration of this process, in the 
case of the demons obliged to leave the man, 
begging to be allowed to enter into the 
swine. Influx from heaven into correspond- 
ing functions of the body produces a resisting 
sphere even in sickness, and operates as a 
mandate upon infesting spirits as soon as a 
lower form to which they correspond is pre- 
sented to them; for that they shall animate it 
when presented is the law of their life, The 
smaller the quantity of the drug, and the 
finer its state of subdivision the less resist- 
ance it offers to the connatus of living forces 
for its expulsion, after " malignities are ab- 
sorbed." 

This explanation is purely inferential; 
though it has long been accepted by many 
students of Swedenborg as a sufficient, or at 
least suggestive, answer to the question, How 
is, it if all causes belong to the spiritual 
world that drugs do facilitate the removal of 
disease ? When the science of Correspond- 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 165 

ence is better understood, this matter will 
become clearer ; and we may hope that a 
" science of medicine " will take the place of 
empiricism. In the meantime the suggestion 
may stand as an attempted explanation of 
the fact that " Divine Providence concurs " 
with the use of: herbs and simples to the 
cure of man's immediate distresses. 

And what of mental states, imagination, 
hope, expectation, faith, and the direct pro- 
duction of such states by the influence of 
mind upon mind, which has been the phy- 
sician's stronghold in all time, and in all 
schools of practice ? " The Doctor's highest 
power is personal, social, magnetic, spiritual, 
not medicinal." Are there possibilities of 
useful development in this power ? Dr. Hol- 
combe defines three forms of this influence. 

" It is Mind-Cure when one person of strong will and 
magnetic power, operates by thought-transference from a 
positive standpoint, upon the mind and nervous system of a 
patient made negative by sickness, fear, ignorance or debil- 
ity. By a species of mental induction, he produces a new 
state of thought, which through the correlation of the 
nervons system brings about a condition of health. It 
is a species of mesmerism." — Page 43. 

This is what we are all the time doing, 
one for another, or one against the other, — 
namely, producing "by a species of mental 
induction a new state of thought," thus call- 



166 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



ing forth new states of the will and its af- 
fections, and an altered flow and endeavor 
of all the human forces. "The human world is 
full of powers in a state of balance and in- 
difference; change the posture of anything 
therein and the whole has to re-adjust itself 
to a new balance, — a rush of forces takes 
place, and currents pass to and fro until the 
equilibrium is recovered." " The moral and 
physical are both under this statical law." 
Hourly and momentarily, by touch, by sphere, 
by speech, by simple thought, human beings 
are thus affecting and moving one another, 
consciously, or unconsciously, for good or ill. 
The power of one will and mind over an- 
other, by the use of thoughts manifested in 
words, looks or acts, directed to the judg- 
ment and understanding, or to the feelings 
of fear, ambition or hope, is the common 
fact of all social contact. Why should it not 
be exerted then for the useful ends of heal- 
ing ? " If ever it has been good to be under 
a course of murcury " asks Dr. Wilkinson, 
" shall it not be better still to be under a 
course of humanity? 7 ' The sphere of a 
sound, believing, use-loving person directed 
to the mind of a sick, ignorant, fearful, dis- 
couraged one, is simply a direct application 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 167 

of human forces, changing the states of the 
mind, the whole adjustment of spheres, and 
thus the influx and movement of forces ac- 
cording to the correspondence of mind and 
body. Every good man is required by the 
" law of love,' 1 to carry about with him a 
sphere of trust, courage, and determination to 
all things orderly and useful; and to will his 
good- will toward men " not only in gen- 
eral but in particular, and with regard to the 
individual states of those to whom he can be 
useful so far as he can know them. Why 
should not this power of mind over mind, 
which belongs to the obligations of neigh- 
borly love, be studied and practiced on the 
same grounds, that make any of the more 
remote and indirect means of alleviating 
physical suffering allowable? 

Mesmerism, as the control of the will of 
the patient, voluntarily yielded or compelled, 
is indeed capable of abuse in many ways. 
Ill-disposed persons may use it to acquire an 
influence for bad ends. It may be abused 
by patients by being resorted to as a kind 
of opiate to compensate for want of moral 
determination. But these possible abuses are 
not reasons against its use as a curative 
agent by suitable persons in indicated cases, 



168 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

any more than the possible abuse of opiates 
and stimulants preclude their use. The 
danger should be clearly understood, and all 
" must know that there is no patent outward 
means that can be a substitute for sanity of 
will; that sooner or later they must exert 
themselves, and waken from their delusions, 
and that every dose of their mesmeric opium 
over and above what was required, is a 
vehicle of weakness which will cost them a 
fresh struggle to conquer, whenever the time 
when they must arise shall come." The nor- 
mal exercise of mind upon mind, of the 
healthy will and thought upon the morbid, 
but still consciously responsive will and in- 
tellect of the patient, is not open to the same 
dangers, nor need it therefore be so strictly 
confined to professional practitioners. 

It may be said in general, that the more 
immediately spiritual the means used for 
relieving abnormal conditions, the more di- 
rectly they are exerted upon the mind of the 
patient, the greater the possibilities of in- 
jury to the mind while relieving the body. 
Errors may be impressed, superstitions con- 
firmed, false persuasions and insanities in- 
duced and fixed, by the very manifold pro- 
cesses of mental induction which through 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 169 

change of spheres and alteration of the flow 
of human forces into the body enables it to 
recover its equilibrium of function. But dis- 
eases are constantly being induced in the 
same way through the unconscious influence 
of one mind upon another, and its appeal to 
selfish affections and their congenial stu- 
pidities and errors and falsities. The pres- 
ence of such mental powers and the fact of 
their unconscious transference, simply calls 
for a science of mind-cure and a conscious 
and intelligent application of the same 
powers to the healing of the sick. 

This science of mind-cure so far as it is 
attained at all, will be obliged to light its 
lamp with the doctrine of Correspondences ; 
because it reveals the law of the relation of 
states of mind to their symptomatic mani- 
festations in the mind and in the body; and 
because it involves also those Laws of 
Order, which are the laws of Divine Provi- 
dence, and reveal what by the will of God 
and in the nature of truth and goodness 
man may do for fellow-man, and what must 
be left for man to do for himself in freedom 
according to reason. 

One thing a man cannot do for his fellow- 
man is to regenerate him ; he can only lead 



170 THE SCIENCE OP CORRESPONDENCE. 

him by instruction to co-operate by his own 
will and endeavor with the laws of regener- 
ation ; one man cannot repent of sin for an- 
other ; he can only help him to see the sin in 
the light of its consequences, and the Lord's 
will with respect to it. But one may sur- 
round another with a sphere of intelligent 
desire for his repentance, reformation and 
regeneration, while leading him in freedom ; 
one may exert such powers of will and 
of thought upon another as will counteract 
his bondage to disorderly conditions, his 
ignorance or fantasy, and restore him to 
freedom to exert his will and think sanely; 
much more then, surely, may one by the 
sum of his influence exerted upon the im- 
agination, hopes, intelligence and ambitions 
of the sick person, labor to induce a "sound 
mind in a sound body," which is itself the 
very fundamental condition of that freedom 
and rationality which is the primary object 
of divine care. The great obstacles to prog- 
ress m this humane work are ignorance of 
the nature and laws of the mind on all 
hands ; and, on the part of many well-mean- 
ing aspirants to mind-cure, ignorance of the 
body and its laws ; while on the part of pro- 
fessional physicians, whose knowledge of 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 171 



the human organism should specially qual- 
ify them and inspire them for this study, 
there is the bondage of tradition and weight 
of materialism. One thing may be affirmed, 
namely : That those who aspire to the study 
of mind and its correspondence with the 
body, must be students also of the bodily or- 
ganism ; and those who would practice from a 
love of use to men, the art of mental healing, 
should approach it through a study of mind 
and body, and add to the most complete 
physiology attainable the psychology revealed 
for the New Jerusalem. Approached by 
such avenues of preparation it will probably 
be found that most pathological conditions, 
and even physical changes of structure, "are 
only organic insanities or spells which only 
require the right word of the physician to 
dissipate them ; and that, although if they 
went on they would kill by their virulence, 
yet are they amenable by a simple impression 
from without," that is, from an outside per 
sonality as the centre of a re-adjustment of 
spheres. Meanwhile, " next to the self con- 
trol of the patient, which is the top of mortal 
medicines, we may reckon the mental control 
oi the doctor, who makes use of his own 



m THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



health and knowledge to give faith in the 
moments when it can be received." 

The so-called " faith-cure" demands treat- 
ment as distinct from "mind-cure." In this, 
prayer is the agency by which a new sphere 
is created, and this sphere is often strength- 
ened by a cordon of prayers. Dr. Holcombe 
says of it : 

"Faith-Cure is ©fleeted by an exalted state of the mind, in 
which hope, expectation and imagination are the chief factors. 
That it is a mental cure and not a truth cure, or a Divine cure, 
is evident from the fact, that cures of this'description have 
been made in all ages and countries and among devotees of 
every and any religion. The cures are sometimes very extra- 
ordinary." — Page 43. 

If the healing of the body can be brought 
about through the states of the mind, prayer 
as one of the means which powerfully eifect 
the states of mind, must be regarded as a 
means for accomplishing such result. As 
practiced by the u faith-healers " it is usually 
grounded in an utterly false and pernicious 
notion of the use of prayer, and induces 
states of enthusiastic persuasion which invite 
insane and deceiving spirits, whose sphere, if 
it dislodge the evil spirits flowing into the 
diseased parts, induces a far more serious 
disease of the mind. The notion is that the 
Lord has promised to answer the prayer of 
faith, and that if we are only firmly per- 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 173 



suaded that He will do a certain thing, He is 
pledged to do it. Accordingly, all arts are 
nsed to induce this confidence in the patient 
and in all present, creating thus a consensus of 
spheres, and a powerful persuasion that the 
Lord will presently answer. Such a set of 
conditions connot fail to invite enthusiastic 
spirits, and they, by the very delight of their 
life, inject insanities, pervert the truths of the 
Word, and perform magical miracles with 
them. There are spirits in the other life 
who by the knowledge of truths, and by 
the power of truths in the ultimates of the 
Word, induce changes of state in others, lift- 
ing them into enthusiastic imaginations, 
bringing them into new relations, and subject- 
ing them to their power for infernal ends. 
The faith that they induce is a mere persua- 
sion, and the truths of the Word which they 
recall are merely for confirmation of falsities 
and the securing to themselves power over 
the spirits of men thereby. An intrepretation 
of the Lord's words, "whatsoever ye ask in 
prayer, believing ye shall receive," as mean- 
ing that He will give whatever we have un- 
doubting confidence in asking, and that He 
will directly interpose to heal those who ask 
Him in humility and confidence, and prove 



174 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

their confidence by persistent importunity, 
is a direct invitation to such spirits. Heal- 
ing of the body may follow, at least a change 
of its state which passes for healing; but the 
mind is held in the power of such spirits and 
the blind lead the blind, till the last case is 
worse than the first. The chemical labora- 
tory is rather to be preferred, than such faith 
and prayer. 

But there is a true faith directed to the 
Lord Jesus Christ as the God of heaven 
and earth, which is an internal acknowledg- 
ment that His will is good -will to men; that 
He operates His will according to the laws 
of Divine order revealed in His Word and 
its doctrine; that the divine order of His 
goverment conspires to health and usefulness, 
and the removal of all obstructions to these 
consistent with man's spiritual welfare. It 
is in harmony with this faith to feel that 
health is a good thing which the Lord has 
abundantly showed His will and power to 
give, with the prayer that we may come into 
a state to receive it. Such faith causes the 
Lord to be present, and when there is in it 
the love of Him and of having His will done, 
the love conjoins. Such acknowledgment of 
faith, and prayer to the Lord in such faith, 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 175 

moves heaven and disposes the soul, and 
affects the world of spirits, and increases the 
power of all orderly means of healing, both 
mental and physical. 

It comes to this then in regard to faith 
and the prayer of faith as agents in healing, 
that there is a true and spurious faith and 
a right and wrong kind of prayer; that so 
far forth as inducing states of mind and 
thence of body are concerned, either may 
contribute to the effect of relief from bodily 
ills, and the spurious sometimes more quickly 
and manifestly than the true; but that heal- 
ing secured by a false faith and selfish prayer 
is at the expense of a spiritual bondage 
which is worse than sickness. But this is a 
warning and appeal in behalf of a true faith 
and a right prayer as against what is false 
and wrong, not against the place and value 
of such means in the healing of the 
sick. In general it may be said, that a true 
faith always involves the acknowledgment 
that the Lord's ends are eternal, and that we 
do not know what temporary states and cir- 
cumstances may be best for us; and the 
spirit of its prayer, whatever the petition, 
is always "not my will but thine be done, 1 ' 



176 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



In this spirit and acknowledgment, prayer 
for health and restoration to active usefulness 
may be offered for one's self, or for others ; 
and it is impossible to overestimate its pos- 
sible effect. It is an active agent in a spirit- 
ual world where space is an appearance, 
where thought brings presence, where love 
conjoins, and good -will is felt. Directed to 
the Lord Jesus Christ, as the visible God in 
whom is the invisible, it penetrates heaven; 
carrying the case of another in love and 
thought to Him, it brings that other into the 
sphere of faith in which it is offered ; it affects 
all in the spiritual world within this circle of 
personality — the spirits about us and about 
the person who is the subject of our desire 
and thought. Swedenborg tells us that 
"supplication, although tacit, with those who 
supplicate from the heart, is heard as a cry 
in heaven. This is the case when such only 
think, much more when they groan from a 
sincere heart." Think, then, of all the influ- 
ences of good- will, enlightenment, power and 
healing, waiting in heaven to now down 
through the world of spirits to man, by every 
way that opens. The source is inexhaus- 
tible. The impulse is continually towards 
us. The flow is measured only by the truth, 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 177 

the sincerity, the spirituality of man's desire. 
Into that fountain of influences true prayer 
ascends as a cry. It is heard as such, felt as 
such, responded to as such. We do not 
know how many ways of influx it may open, 
nor how powerfully they may affect all our 
spiritual associates, including those who are 
present in our desire and thought. We only 
know that if offered in acknowledgment and 
submission to the Divine will it is in har- 
mony with Divine order ; and that the re- 
vealed laws of spiritual association and influx 
are manifold, including ourselves and all 
whom we can pray for; and that the move- 
ments of these laws are exact, and the at- 
mosphere in which they operate is more quick 
and alive than that electric fluid, which, 
every time you make connection by the 
faintest impulse at any point, reports the tick 
at every station in a circuit of a thousand 
miles. 

The question, therefore, is not as to the 
influence of mind upon the body, nor of the 
effect of one mind upon another as a means of 
reaching and affecting bodily disease, nor as 
to the efficacy of prayer as a means in this 
change and re-adjustment of mental and thus 
of bodily states ; but only as to the orderly use 



178 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



of these means, which, we affirm, can only be 
learned in its fullness from the laws of Corre- 
spondence and the principles of theology now 
opened to the church from the Word, and by 
means of ''things heard and seen" by the serv- 
ant of the Lord chosen and prepared for 
this very purpose. We turn now to consider, 
finally, in the light of these revelations the 
claims of Christian Science as set forth by 
Dr. Holcombe: 

"The Christian Science cure is not an answer to the prayer of 
faith, nor is it only the operation of mind upon mind. It is the 
operation of absolute or divine truth upon the individual mind. 
It recognizes truth as a spiritual force to be called into activ- 
ity, as any other latent force is evoked, by suitable conditions. 
It is based upon the idealistic interpretation of nature and 
the omnipresence and immanence of the divine life. Its mot- 
to is, God is the only life; Spirit is the only substance; Love 
working by Truth is the only law." — Page 43. 

There is something attractive in this form of 
statement to a disciple of Swedenborg who 
only thinks in general ideas; for being accus- 
tomed to the thought of the supremacy of the 
spiritual over the natural, and of the Lord as 
the only life, and of His goodness and truth 
as the verimost substance and form, such a 
statement seems to be in general agreement 
with the truth. But the agreement disappears 
when it is analyzed as to the particulars in- 
volved. 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 179 

What is this "absolute divine truth" which 
operates upon the individual mind? Is it 
the truth which God is, — the "Word, which is 
God? Then Swedenborg affirms and shows 
that it does not operate upon any individual 
without a medium. "It is a law of Divine 
Providence that man should be led and taught 
by the Lord from heaven through the Word 
and doctrine and preaching from it, and this 
in all appearance as by himself."* The Word 
is such a medium of divine truth to man and of 
its power with him, because it is written in Cor- 
respondences, and while man reads it in its 
letter the angels of heaven perceive the spirit- 
ual sense of what is read, and man is thus 
brought according to his willingness to be in- 
structed and led by the Lord within the sphere 
of divine truth as it is with the angels of heaven. 

But the Lord thus leads him by correspond- 
ence and influx "according to the truths that 
are with him, and does not immediately infuse 
new ones/' 

What, then, is meant by " the absolute 
truth ?" If it be said the truth of the Word 
is meant, and the Doctor at least does prob- 
ably mean this, then it is answered that 
according to Swedenborg the truth of the 

♦Divine Providence, n. 154. 



180 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

Word is not absolute truth but accommodated 
truth. It is in the letter accommodated to all 
sorts and conditions of men, and " is not un- 
derstood without doctrine in the spiritual 
sense truth is accommodated to the angels 
of heaven, and to the apprehension of in- 
structed and spiritually minded men. But 
even to the angels truth is clothed in appear- 
ances, and is absolute only with God. 

If it be said that " absolute " is not used in 
this technical sense, but only as equivalent to 
genuine truth and as distinguished from 
falsity and sensuous fallacy, then we have 
to inquire whether or not Christian Science 
has any knowledge of genuine truths. The 
fact that "people have been cured of long- 
standing diseases which have resisted all 
forms of medication " counts for nothing in 
this inquiry ; for any mental persuasion may 
effect this, and, as we have said, a false per- 
suasion may be more immediately effective 
than the truth, because stronger in appeal 
to hope and ambition. What are the truths 
upon which Christian Science relies ? 

"The omnipresence of G-od, his perpetual 
immanence in the soul, the power of truth 
and of faith, the force of ideas, the curative 
efficacy of thought, the ubiquity of mind — 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 181 

the silent transference of thought regardless 
of time and space, the supremacy of the 
spiritual over the natural, of the real over 
the apparent; these are the factors of 
Christian Science. Disprove them and it 
perishes. It stands or falls with these eternal 
verities." 

The central inquiry here is as to the idea 
of God. Swedenborg says "thought con- 
cerning God as Man, in whom is the Divine 
Trinity, opens heaven; on the other hand, 
thought concerning God as not Man, which 
is presented apparently as a cloud or as 
nature in her smallest principles, closes 
heaven; for God is Man as the universal 
heaven in its complex is a man, and every 
angel and spirit is thence a man. Therefore 
it i*s that thoughts alone concerning the Lord 
Jesus Christ, as being the God of the uni- 
verse opens heaven.* There is one unvarying 
teaching in Swedenborg's writings — "that 
the idea of God in heaven is the Lord;" 
that the only true idea possible to man is 
that of a Divine Man; that the "idea of an 
invisible God is no idea, and is not separa- 
ble from the thought of the principles and 
forces of nature, and cannot communicate 

*4.thanasian Creed, n. 6. 



182 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

with heaven and the Lord, but falls back 
upon itself and perishes. Contrast with this 
the teaching of any and every work on 
Christian Science that you can find, and you 
will see that its "absolute truth" concern- 
ing God is just this which Swedenborg de- 
clares to be no truth, and which he says 
every naturalist and denier of God shows 
himself in the spiritual world to have con- 
firmed in his life on earth. The idea of 
God with which Christian Science expects to 
" renovate the spiritual character as surely 
as it remodels the physical system," is the 
thought of a universal Spirit, proceeding 
from no Divine Person, and omnipresent by 
virtue of its ideal presence as the central and 
pervading life of all persons and all things. 
All its reasonings play hide-and-seek 
around two notions : God as the spirit in 
man ; and man as the thought and manifes- 
tation of God. This, then, measured by the 
doctrine revealed for the use of those who 
will be of the New Church, will not answer 
as the absolute or genuine truth ; and in the 
light of Swedenborg's revelations of the 
future life, a man would refuse such medi- 
cine at any price. 

Other factors of Christian Science are 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 183 

"the power of truth and of faith/ the force 
of ideas, the curative efficacy of thought, 
the ubiquity of mind." The power is not 
denied ; but the power for good, that is per- 
manent spiritual good, will depend upon the 
quality of the faith, ideas, thought. Is it the 
truth of the spiritual sense of the Word that 
is to exercise this beneficent power? If so, 
is it discerned by the Christian Scientist in- 
terpreting the Scriptures by a few Corre- 
spondences and many more preconceived 
notions? Any one who knows anything 
about it, will not mistake the fanciful specu- 
lations that are offered as the spiritual sense 
of the Word for the genuine truth. Sweden- 
borg says that hereafter none will be per- 
mitted, even by a knowledge of Correspond- 
ences, to enter into the spiritual sense, except 
they be principled in genuine doctrine, lest 
it be profaned. Are these genuine doctrines 
known to Christian Scientists? Dr. Hol- 
combe will scarcely claim that they are ; and 
it has been shown that a great many notions 
to which he seems to lend his sanction are di- 
rectly contrary to the genuine truths revealed 
by the Lord through His servant, Swedenborg. 

But granting that genuine truths are known 
and acknowledged in their divine rational au- 



184 THE SCIENCE OP CORRESPONDENCE. 



thority, we have still to inquire whether the 
principle on which Christian Science claims to 
work with them is a valid one. 

"Whoever can plant the absolute truth in the center of the 
human soul has a lever which can move, unconsciously to the 
individual, the will, the understanding, the imagination, the 
sensations, the brain, the heart, the lungs, the blood; and can 
determine the chemical or nutritive interchanges and metamor- 
phoses of every molecule of the body. 

Hence it is that divine truth renovates the spiritual character 
as surely as it remodels the physical system. It works from 
center to circumferences." — Page 47. 

Can absolute or genuine truth, being known 
be planted at the center of a human soul "un- 
consciously to the individual?" Not by any 
human being ; not at all in any other sense 
than that it is present from the Lord in the 
inmost — always and to eternity ; and in the 
internal heavenly mind in the form of 
"remains," waiting to be consciously ac- 
cepted by the individual acting in freedom 
according to the truths "of which his under- 
standing is composed." The internal has no 
power to come forth except as the individual 
learns truths from the Word and consciously 
and freely determines his life according to 
them. If truth in the internal could work 
these wonders that the Doctor enumerates, 
the angels who are already associated with 
men and touching these spiritual "remains," 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 185 

would work them for all men without help 
from man. But, on the contrary, Swedenborg 
shows throughout, and by every fact and rea- 
son of Divine Providence, "that the Lord does 
not without the use of means, teach man truths 
either from himself, or through the angels; 
but by means derived from the Word, from 
preaching and reading, from conversation and 
intercourse with others, and from private re- 
flections arising out of them; and man is then 
enlightened according to his affections ground- 
ed in use, otherwise he would not act as if 
from himself* The only way, therefore, in 
whxh one can plant genuine truths in a hu- 
man soul is by instruction and appeal to his 
affection and the conscious determinations of 
his own will and life. It is "to teach truth 
and lead by truth to good/' not blindly, but 
as one leads another through his understand- 
ing. 

Another fallacy in this principle of "truth- 
cure" as it is called, is that divine truth 
"works from center to circumferences." It 
leads to the supposition that if implanted in 
the center of the soul, or awakened there, 
it will work from within out, secretly and even 
"unconsciously" to the individual. The Doc- 

♦Athanasian Creed, n. 67. 



186 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



tor ought to know that the whole doctrine of 
Correspondence and Influx is against this 
notion. It is a law of divine order "that the 
Lord acts from inmosts and from ultimates 
at the same time, because only thus are all 
things held together in connection." It is 
shown by Swedenborg throughout that the 
operation of divine and spiritual forces is 
simultaneously from centre and circumference 
to order intermediates; not therefore by vir- 
tue of interior will and thought without out- 
ward obedience, much less by influx without 
instruction in truths, is man healed as to his 
spiritual character. Any secret influence ex- 
erted "unconsciously to the individual" if it 
were allowed, would only be an obsession of 
his will, which no angel would attempt, 
which evil spirits dare not, and which men 
ought not to practice. 

A true Christian Science will assert the 
cause of all disease as spiritual; but it will 
not ignore its organic and functional effects 
in the disordered forms it induces in the 
spirit first, and thence by correspondence in 
the body. It will rightly refer the root and 
origin of all that afflicts man in mind, body 
or estate, to man's evil will and way; but it 
will not ignore its actual reality and infernal 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 187 

contagion until arrested and removed by re- 
pentance and regeneration, involving man's 
final judgment and promotion to his own 
place and perfect environment in a spiritual 
world made and governed to that end. It 
will rightly assert the omnipotence of the Re- 
deemer over all manner of sin and sickness ; 
but it will not ignore the laws of divine Provi- 
dence by which the Great Physician ever 
works through man's free will and co-oper- 
ation, and this by organic processes and for 
eternal ends * 

The one legitimate end and effort for man 
is to come into divine order, by an observance 
of all revealed laws, spiritual and natural. 
The possibility and the obligations of such a 
life of order are greatly increased by the re- 
velations of the laws of Divine Providence 
and of the spiritual world, and of man's 
nature and relation to that world. As these 
revelations are studied and understood we 
may expect the doctrine of regeneration to 
shed its light upon the intercourse between 
the soul and the body, and to inaugurate for 
men a science of health and healing. The 
science of Correspondence, which Sweden- 
borg calls "the science of sciences," when 

♦The New Birth, p. 122. 



188 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 

studied in the acknowledgment of the doc 
trines of spiritual life and in connection with 
physiology will prove to be the " key " to 
a new medicine as it is the lamp of a new 
life. It has been my hope to win some 
minds to the study of this better way, and to 
steady some who are already trying to walk 
in it, and who are sometimes deceived by 
side lights which are only the ignis fatui 
of naturalism, miscalled idealism. 

While the principles of a true Christian 
Science of mental and bodily health are being 
studied from the facts and doctrines of the 
revelation made through Swedenborg, they 
will not go far astray who remember religion 
is of life, and that our chief concern is to live 
the principles of true religion as revealed in 
the "Word and its doctrine, trusting the Lord 
as our Heavenly Father, who will lead us and 
teach us, and as an Almighty Redeemer who, 
if we (t continue in His Word," will deliver 
us by His truth. When man will thus look 
to the Lord and do what He teaches, living 
in the reality and power of spiritual things ; 
concerned only that evils should be brought 
to light that they may be repented of and 
put away, trusting the Lord to overrule all 
things for good to them that love Him, then 



THOUGHTS ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. 189 

all things will work together to bring his life 
into order; one thing with another, and all 
together with a view to the harmonious 
whole in heaven, which is the divine end in 
the making of us. The more simply and 
trustfully any one is in this life, the more he 
will regard disease as a disorder and a man- 
ifestation of evils, and the more he will rise 
above it y not by denying it, but by seeking 
only to know and do the Lord's will, and to 
come into obedience to the laws of spiritual 
and bodily health, and the more he will en- 
joy inward tranquillity and peace. They are 
right, therefore, who assert the supremacy of 
the spiritual life ; for so far as we come into 
that orderly life of the spirit, which is regen- 
eration, we are protected from the sphere of 
evil spirits, brought within the sphere of an- 
gelic association, and into the stream of that 
divine influx and operation which worts all 
things for eternal ends. This spiritual state 
lifts from the body at once the chief cause of 
its ills and makes way for happy usefulness 
day by day in the circumstances which are 
the best possible preparation for our entrance 
into the soul's own world in its own body ; a 
body which is fashioned in the image of the 
soul's ruling love, and is free in a world 



190 THE SCIENCE OF CORRESPONDENCE. 



where to think is to see, where to wish is to 
have, where to will and purpose is to be and 
do. "To him that overcometh will I give to 
eat of the tree of life which is in the mid?* 
of the paradise of God!" 



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